


when I say forever, it's the goddamn truth

by defcontwo



Series: millions of years yet to come [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Idiot Teens Get Married, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: Snapshots from a marriage, from Jack's sophomore year and beyond.
Relationships: Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Series: millions of years yet to come [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761844
Comments: 153
Kudos: 232





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I'm just gonna keep adding to this 'verse as the mood strikes me???? ay. thanks for reading, everyone. I hope you're staying safe. 
> 
> title from kesha because of course it is.

Jack is lucky. 

He didn’t used to think so. It’s one of those things that he had to learn, had to be drilled into him until he figured out how to pick it up naturally. When you’re feeling anxious, sit down with a pen and paper, and write down all of the good things that you have going for you in your life. That’s what they said, back in rehab, and he hasn’t always been the best patient, or the most consistent, but that one’s always stuck with him. It works, even when most other things don’t. 

He’s lucky to be alive. Lucky to have parents who love him. Lucky that he tests well and scored high enough on his SATs to allow Samwell to overlook his spotty high school record and the fact that he once overdosed on benzos. Lucky to have Shitty, and the rest of his team, the frogs that are slowly becoming his friends, because they make him a better friend and a better captain than he ever could have expected to be. 

Lucky that after three years of separation, one poorly thought out transatlantic trip and some really fucking incredible fooling around, Kent still wants to be married to him, even if it took Jack that long to figure that the same was true for himself. It’s probably not romantic to have that penny drop three years later after you’ve slept with someone else, but Jack has never done anything the right way, and he guesses he’s not about to start now. 

Jack is lucky to have Kent. Lucky to have his early morning string of emoji good morning texts. Lucky to have his sleepy face blinking at him through the computer screen over Skype after Kent’s just got done with a long roadie. Lucky to have his dumb Kermit the Frog impressions and prissy annoying cat and the way Kent always curls into Jack’s side when they’re in bed together. 

Jack knows all of these things. 

He also knows that with as new as this whole “getting-back-together-thing” is between them, he’s definitely pushing his luck with this Shitty trip. 

On the other side of the country, through a small Skype window, Kent blinks once, twice, and then takes another sip from his Gatorade bottle. “I’m not mad, Zimms.” 

Jack sighs, a little, and leans back in his chair. He didn’t really want to have to fight this way. It’s always been weird to him, fighting through the computer. 

Kent leans in, close enough that Jack can see the circles under his eyes and the stitches above his eyebrows, surefire signs that the Aces latest roadie through Central was every bit as brutal as it looked. “Why would I be mad, huh? It’s not like this is the first time that we’ll be getting to see each other since I played the Bruins in February.” 

Kent sucks in his teeth, and Jack’s stomach sinks. “Not like I made plans, or anything, reservations for nice dinners and a hiking trail that I wanted to show you. We can still do the hike, you know. With Shitty. It’s Shitty, right? I’m remembering the right guy? Man, you know. We can do lots of things with him. Maybe he can watch us fuck or something, and write about it for his next gender studies essay. I bet _that’ll_ get him an A.” 

Jack smiles weakly, like that’s gonna do him any good. “So, you are mad.” 

Kent lets out a loud, gusty sigh, because he’s easily the most dramatic person Jack knows, and he will waste no time in living up to that at any possible opportunity. “Of course I’m fucking mad, Jack, you massive fucking asshole.” 

“He already bought the tickets?” Jack says. This is his fault. He knows that, logically. The time to tell Shitty about him and Kent was definitely way before Shitty made a surprise bid for Sophomore Year Spring Break in Vegas. 

It’s easier said than done, is all. All of the many hours and days and months that he and Shitty have shared stretch out before him, practice and kegsters and early morning eggs, and all Jack can think is, what will he think of me, that it took me this long to tell him. How do I even begin to explain myself? 

So, he doesn’t. And he still hasn’t. 

And now Shitty is coming to Vegas with him, fuck. 

Kit crawls into the frame, draping herself around Kent’s shoulders, and peering forward into Kent’s MacBook camera, her judgmental yellow eyes taking Jack in and clearly finding him wanting. Right now, he can’t say he blames her. 

Kent’s expression softens, just a little, and Jack definitely knows that he can’t take credit for it. “You’re so lucky that I love your dumb ass,” Kent says, and then hangs up. 

“Trust me, I know,” Jack murmurs to the blank screen, before closing his laptop. It’s late and he’s pretty sure that Kent’s already well on his way to passing out, but Jack sends him a text message anyways, a simple “je t'aime” and then turns off his bedside lamp. 

Tomorrow, he really has to talk to Shitty.

.

He doesn’t talk to Shitty. He makes a plan for how to talk to Shitty, though, which Jack figures has to count for something.

It’s about a twenty-five minute car ride from the Haus to Logan, give or take. Closer to forty-five minutes in Spring Break traffic. It seemed like a good idea, at the time. 

Being stuck in a car meant one of two things: first, that Jack has nowhere to go in case he decides to try and chicken out, and second, the car ride has to end eventually and then they’ll be in the airport, around people, and whatever reaction Shitty winds up having will have to end. 

It’s a great idea. 

It’s a great idea right up until Jack finds himself stuck in traffic, hands gripping the wheel too tight, with absolutely nothing to say. Crisse, he can never tell Maman about this, he’ll never fucking live it down. 

“So,” Jack says, slowly. “You know, uh. You know, Kent.” 

Shitty glances at him askance, and scrunches up his face, making his mustache and his aviators look like they’re pushed all the way together, creating a mockery of an expression. “Yeah, dude. I know Parson. We’re going to see him, remember?” 

Jack clears his throat. “Right. Heh. I know. I just mean, like. Do you remember those, uh, stories that Ransom and Holster found online about me and Parse that they, uh, like to read in dramatic voices and make fun of when I’m not around that they think I don’t know about?” 

“Yeah, bro, but that’s like….” Shitty’s voice gets how it gets when he’s concerned, all deep and slow, like he thinks he’s trying to calm a skittish horse or something. It’s soothing, most of the time. Not now, though. “They don’t mean anything by it, you know? Everyone knows that like...well, the stories aren’t real.” 

Jacks sighs, and thinks of every quiet moment when he could’ve spoken out, every joke that he ignored because he was a little too used to jokes just like it, and quietly swears to himself. “Eh, well. They are, though. Real, I mean.” 

Shitty pauses for a long, careful minute, frowning softly. ”Okay. Well….real in what way, my dude?” 

Jack tightens his grip on the steering wheel, and blows out a breath. “It’s….it’s a long story. A very long story and not all of it...not all of it is very good or happy, but….we’re, uh. We’re trying again. To make it work.” 

Jack chances a look at Shitty, and finds Shitty staring at him, blankly, with his mouth gaping a little, and his eyes still obscured by aviators but probably, beneath them, wide open. “You’ve gotta be fucking shitting with me right now, bro.” 

The traffic finally starts to inch forward, and Jack flicks his blinker on, as they slowly start to slide towards the exit for Logan. “I’m not. I...Jesus, do you think that I’d lie about something like this, Shits?” 

Shitty leans back in his seat, and pushes his aviators to the top of his head. “Well, that’s. I mean. Thank you for, uh…..thank you for…..” Shitty says, and this is the script, the Shitty Knight go-to for when people come out to him, but Jack can tell that he’s struggling to stick to it. Can’t tell if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing. Beneath the thin cotton fabric of Jack’s navy blue v-neck that he’s wearing mostly because he knows that Kent likes how he looks in it, Jack can feel his heart beating a rapid staccato, and he takes a small breath, in and out, and tries not to let himself get too overwhelmed, and ruin this whole thing entirely. 

Shitty opens his mouth, and then closes it again. He looks kinda like a fish, actually, and in any other situation, Jack would definitely chirp him for it. “It’s just....I did get a vibe coming from you, you know, whenever Parse has come up since Thanksgiving. Or really, well...whenever Parse comes up at all, it’s like I’m getting some kind of new reaction from you that I’ve never seen before but uh, I guess…..” Here, Shitty shakes his head, eyes crinkling in that way that means Shitty is laughing mostly at himself. “I wasn’t sure, though. It literally never occurred to me that it was something you would’ve already acted on, man. Which is on me, for not giving you the credit. So, you’re like. Dating Kent Parson?” 

Jack eyes an eighteen wheeler up ahead of them, and idly wonders what would happen if the giant truck just runs them right off the road, and he doesn’t have to finish having this conversation. 

But Jack pulls off at the airport exit, and the eighteen wheeler keeps on driving. No such luck. “Actually, uh…..we’re married,” Jack says, staring carefully forward as he turns towards the short-term parking lot. 

The rest of the drive is mostly shouting.

.

By the time Shitty is about two glasses of complimentary whisky deep, he’s settled into a loose, easy smile. It’s the sort of “Act Normal and everything will Be Normal” facade that Jack’s pretty sure Shitty would never admit to having learned from his mother.

Jack has never been more embarrassingly thrilled for WASP socio-cultural norms before in his life. 

Halfway through the flight, Shitty plucks out an earbud, presses pause on the episode of Fringe that he was re-watching, and pokes Jack in the arm. “Jack. My dearest Jackalope. What happened to your ring?” 

Jacks startles, almost knocking over his ginger ale as he moves to place his thumb along the edges of _The Night Witches_ , saving his place in the book. “They threw it out.” 

“They - what?” Shitty’s mustache draws together ominously. 

Jack leans back into the seat; even in the First Class cabin, the stale plane air always starts to get to him after a little while, causing a headache to form just behind his eyes. He lifts up his index finger to rub at the space between his eyebrows, but it doesn’t help. “We, uh. We didn’t have real rings. Just stick tape. It was in my pocket at the hospital and well, uh. You know. Nurses must have thought it was garbage.” Jack lifts a shoulder in a thin shrug. “We’d get new ones but that would just invite questions, you know?” 

Shitty’s eyes widen in shock, his lips tightening together the way they do when he’s pissed about something and wants to rip into another one of his classic “that’s societal bullshit, brah” rants. This one would probably be something about toxic masculinity and institutional homophobia in professional sports. Jack’s sure that it would be just as good a rant as all of the others but he doesn’t need to hear it; he’s the one living it, after all. 

Shitty screws his mouth shut, a soft frown tugging at the corner of his lips. There’s pity in his gaze that Jack gets but doesn’t really want to see. “That’s fucked up, bro. Shit’s fucked up.” 

Jack tosses him a small, lopsided smile. “Tell me something I don’t know.” 

The closer they get to Vegas, though, the more anxiety starts to settle into Jack’s shoulders, tension tightening the muscles in his neck. He casts a longing glance at Shitty’s third glass of whisky because God, could he use something to take the edge off, before sighing and asking the flight attendant for another ginger ale. 

There’s no map for this; he has no idea how the rest of this week is going to go. Jack had never once planned for what it might look like for these two, disparate halves of his life to meet. There’s no pretense, no half-truths to this, not like the last time Kent visited the Haus. For the first time, he’s letting Shitty all the way into his life and it’s….fucking terrifying, actually. More terrifying than it should be, when he knows how chill and accepting Shitty can be. 

When they’re finally stepping off the plane at McCarran International, Jack’s jitters are at an all-time high and he’s sure that Shitty, even as tipsy as he is, is definitely picking up on them. Jack switches his phone back on as they amble towards the baggage claim, and waits for the texts to come in. Kent is planning on picking them up, as far as he knows, but when Jack’s screen gets flooded with messages, one of them reads “ugh sry babe got sucked into dumb gm meeting, sent a car to pick u up. driver’s name is jorge he’s the fuckn best.” 

Jack breathes a small, momentary sigh of relief at the delay, that’s followed up pretty swiftly by the pang of disappointment at having to wait that much longer until he can see Kent again. “Kent got caught up at the arena, so there’s a car to pick us up.” 

“Cool, bro,” Shitty says, slinging his duffle bag over his shoulder. “Lead the way.”

.

Shitty whistles sharply as Jorge winds his way down a narrow wooded road, lined with low desert shrubs and trees, opening up onto a well-maintained red sand driveway and Kent's house.

It's not a big house; it's the land that's the big draw here, just like it's meant to be because in Kent’s own words, “I looked at ten or twenty giant fucking houses that had the kind of privacy that I was looking for, and every single one of them made Liberace look tame. I'm pretty gay but I'm not _that_ gay.” 

So the house itself, it's a relatively modest sprawl of a ranch, done up with industrial cement accents and high windows that let in a lot of light. But you have to drive at least a mile to find anyone else, and beyond Kent's pool and his yard, there's a hiking trail where Kent likes to go running in the early mornings. 

Jack never thought he could see himself living in Vegas, really making a home for himself here. Not in this bright neon city, known for its sins, and not in the dry, oppressive heat that's so far from his native Montreal. But since the lockout gifted Kent with more free time than a regular NHL season would allow, they wound up spending all of Christmas break here. Jack’s parents flew in about a week after Jack did, followed by Kent’s mom, and they even managed to get Kent’s two older brothers via satellite phone, ever so briefly, since neither of them could manage to swing shore leave for the holidays. 

And it was awkward at first, sure, mainly because no one could figure out how to talk around the massive elephant in the room. But Kent and Papa have always been thick as thieves in a way that used to bother Jack, back in the Q, used to make him wonder if Papa ever wanted to replace him with another son, a son who could laugh easily and didn’t need to coach himself through breathing exercises to get through the day. 

But with the weak December light shining through the high windows in Kent’s kitchen, highlighting Kent and Papa as they stood around the cement kitchen island, laughing at some cat video on Papa’s iPad, it was easier to see Papa’s affection for Kent for what it always was. It was gratitude for someone who made his son happy but also, unmistakably, a twinge of heartbreaking affection for a boy whose own father had died when he was still so young. He’s got a big heart, his Papa. Jack likes to think that he’s getting better at understanding that it’s big enough to love more than one son. 

They made some good memories in this house, over Christmas. Jack’s a little surprised at how much Vegas is growing on him already, even after only a few visits. 

Not for the first time, Jack wonders if Kent didn't have him in mind, at least a little, when he picked this place out. But that was over two years ago, back when they weren't even talking, and pressing on that bruise too hard causes an ache in Jack’s chest that he doesn't want to have to worry about right now. Not with Shitty here, and a million more pressing things to lose his shit over. 

“Thanks for the ride, Jorge,” Jack says, slinging his duffle over one shoulder, and digging around in his pocket for his keys. 

“Yeah, thanks, man,” Shitty says, and then leans over to Jack and whispers, “should we tip him or something?” 

Jorge laughs, warm eyes crinkling in the bright afternoon sun. Jack can see why Kent likes him. “Don't even worry about it, kid. You don't even wanna know how much the Aces pay me to drive around their players.” 

“C’mon, Shits,” Jack says, waving Jorge off, and heading for the front door. He doesn't look at Shitty at all as he unlocks the door, and then punches in the code for Kent's alarm (0190, of course). He's pretty sure this is weird. It has to be weird. It feels weird to him. 

Jack takes a deep breath, and sighs, as he lets his duffle fall to the hardwood floor of the foyer with a light thunk. The house smells like Kent. Or it smells like Kent’s house, anyways, a distinctive mix of eucalyptus and lemon and cat hair, lingering somewhere underneath, stubbornly persistent throughout every one of Kent’s “my home will not smell like a fucking hockey player lives here” cleaning binges. 

Jack bought a eucalyptus candle at a little shop in Boston a while back, on a whim, just because -- just because it was the middle of February and Kent was on back-to-back roadies, and now that Jack had opened the door, had let himself feel every inch of the ache that missing Kent was and always will be, it was like all he wanted was for Kent to be near him. For Kent to be wrapped around him in bed, or flopped over him on the couch, teasing and poking, but always with that same fond, teasing smile. 

So Jack went and bought himself a candle, and he lights it sometimes in his room at the Haus, just because. It’s not the same, though. Not by a long shot. 

There’s a streak of white and grey out of the corner of Jack’s eye, here and then gone, and he shakes his head, ruefully. 

“Was that -- Kit Purrson?” Shitty asks, a little hesitant, looking a little like he’s still not sure whether or not he’s having an extended hallucation. 

“Yeah,” Jack says. “She’s still not sure if she hates me yet or not. She’ll show her face again in a couple of hours to stare at us, probably.” 

Shitty laughs, sharp and loud, and snorts a little at the end of it. “Parse’s cat hates you?” 

Jack frowns. He doesn’t really think it’s that funny. “I don’t know if she hates me. She….judges me.” 

“Bro,” Shitty says, raising both eyebrows. “She’s a cat.” 

“Exactly,” Jack mutters under his breath, but then he’s picking up his duffle again, and flipping on a few of the lights as he goes. “Here, Shits, I’ll show you where the guest room is.” 

It’s a nice house. Jack knows it’s a nice house, even in comparison to all of the many nice houses that he grew up in, or went to parties in, as a child of a very famous hockey player. There’s a lot of windows and natural wood and he’s not sure where Kent got most of this stuff, but it’s probably some place called West Elm because the catalogues are always stacked up on the kitchen counter. 

But Jack can’t help himself. He keeps trying to see it through Shitty’s eyes, trying to figure out if Shitty can see the parts that aren’t visible to the naked eye. 

In the corner, there’s a photograph on the wall of Kent and his team just after they won the Cup for the first time. The first time Jack saw it, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at it a little too long, and almost saying something nasty, and then biting it back at the last second because that split-second of victory, the bright red bloom of anger spreading across Kent’s face, wouldn’t be worth the hurt that came swiftly after. 

Here, there’s the couch where he and Kent had their first real, no-holds-barred, throw-everything-out-on the-ice-talk about what they meant to each other. About what they wanted. About what they were still pissed off about, warts and all. Next to it, there’s the rug where they’d fucked, afterwards, desperate and impatient and so, so relieved to finally be on the same page. Jack had rug-burn on his back for a couple of days and Kent couldn’t stop making fun of it with this small, pleased smirk. 

Jack blinks and shakes his head. There’s no way for Shitty to know all that. It’s just a fucking couch. Just a nice living room with a rug. 

“Duuuuuuuuuuuude,” Shitty says, pushing past Jack into the guest room, “maybe I’ve been in college for too long but shit, man, is that bed as comfortable as it looks?” 

Jack leans against the door jamb, and shrugs his other shoulder. “I don’t know, I’ve never slept in it.” 

Shitty stumbles, a little, and collapses to the bed, twisting around to look up at Jack. He looks, honestly, like he should probably take a nap after all of that whisky and whisper-screaming into Jack’s left ear the whole flight. He also looks like it honestly just occurred to him for the first time that Jack would be sleeping in the same bed as Kent. 

And for the first time since this morning, Jack has to laugh. 

Fuck, the situation that he’s gotten himself into.

.

He was right about Shitty needing a nap; they’re in the house for all of ten minutes before he passes right out in the middle of the guest bed, shoes on the edge of the duvet and still in his clothes from the flight.

Jack takes the opportunity to unpack his bag with what little he brought with him, since he already left a bunch of his stuff in Kent’s closet over the holidays. Jack’s a little embarrassed that Maman had to be the one to suggest that to him, that this was the sort of thing that would go a long way in helping Kent realize that he was serious about this, that he wasn’t going to just up and disappear again. 

And it’s warmed him all the way up every time he’s gone to Skype with Kent since, only to have the video load and reveal Kent in his favorite worn-in Samwell sweatshirt, or a t-shirt from his Bantam days. Jack’s clothes fit Kent a lot tighter around the shoulders than they used to, back in the Q, but all that does is make the back of Jack’s throat go dry with want, so it’s not like that’s anything to complain about. 

Jack drops his grubby-feeling airplane clothes into the hamper by the bathroom door, turning all the taps in the shower on to full blast. There’s nothing wrong with the bathroom that he shares with Shitty, most days out of the year. There’s a shower and a bathtub for when his muscles are sore and screaming out for epsom salt, and it only clogs some of the time. It gets the job done, sure, but the huge walk-in shower in Kent’s bedroom, _their_ bedroom, is something he’s been looking forward to since he left Vegas back in early January. The whole room smells like Kent’s soap, the same soap that he’d had back in Berlin, and it's so easy to just wrap himself up in this place that’s completely infused with _Kent_. 

He’s just finished rinsing the conditioner out of his hair when he hears light footsteps padding along the tile, followed by a soft knock on the glass door of the shower. 

“Is there a hot, naked stranger in my shower?” Kent’s voice calls through. Jack huffs a laugh, pushing open the glass door and letting some of the steam out. 

For all that he knew exactly who was on the other side of the door, it’s still a rush, seeing Kent standing there in the sort of business casual outfit that he saves for GM meetings, all well-fitted button-downs and pants that show off his ass. He’s beautiful like this. He’s beautiful in Jack’s ratty oversized sweatpants, too. He’s just beautiful, period. 

Jack feels his breath catch a little, and he knows that Kent must’ve heard it from the way he goes a little pink in the cheeks. Kent scrunches his nose up in an expression of mock disappointment, turning his head as if to walk away. “Oh shit, my bad, it’s just my husband. Sorry, babe.” 

Jack rolls his eyes, reaching out to grab hold of Kent’s arm. “Hey Kenny. Join me?” 

Kent pushes the glass door open further, letting his gaze drag all the way down Jack’s chest and back up in that slow, purposeful way of his that never fails to send a flush riding up the back of Jack’s neck. “Well, you’re no hot, naked stranger but sure, babe, I guess you’ll do.” 

“Unbelievable,” Jack mutters, as he presses himself into Kent, dipping his head down for a kiss and getting Kent’s clothes completely drenched in the process. 

“You dick,” Kent smiles into their next kiss, tangling his fingers into the hair at the nape of Jack’s neck and tugging, just the way he knows Jack likes it. “This button-down is Armani.” 

“I’ll get you a new one,” Jack murmurs, and then drags him the rest of the way in. 

The water makes the fabric of Kent’s clothing heavy but Jack makes quick work of it anyways, shrugging the shirt to the damp tile floor while Kent undoes the belt on his pants, tossing it over the shower door, before kicking off his pants and briefs. Jack pushes Kent backwards into the glass wall behind them, both hands braced against Kent’s shoulders, while he takes a minute to just stand there in the foggy, humid bathroom and _look_ at him. 

The cut over his eyebrow is mostly healed but there’s a yellow, mottled bruise on his left thigh from a bad check, with another, much newer one spreading across the right side of his ribs. Kent looks up at him from beneath his eyelashes, his hands coming up to wrap loosely around Jack’s wrists. Jack feels the corner of his lips tug upwards into a smile, every point of contact like a sharp current running all the way through him. He slips his right hand into Kent’s left, turning it upwards so he can kiss the soft skin on the inside of Kent’s wrist, right where the deep, black ink of Kent’s Ace of Spades tattoo lies, the one he got after his first Cup win. 

“Think you’ll get another one of these this year?” Jack says, brushing his lips upwards, towards the base of Kent’s palm. 

“That’s the plan,” Kent says, as he lets the fingertips of his free hand dance down the side of Jack’s ribs, coming to rest at the divot of his hip bone. “Where’s your friend?” 

“Day drank too much on the flight over and passed out,” Jack says in a low hush, like it matters, as if there’s anyone at all that could hear them. “What do you say, Kenny? Think you can fuck me before he wakes up?” 

“Well,” Kent drawls, rising up onto the balls of his feet, letting the spray of the shower glance past the side of his face. “You know I always like a challenge.”

.

“Uh….Jack? Hello? Have I been left alone in a stranger’s house and am I being Punk’d?”

 _”Tabernak,_ ” Jacks swears softly, as he pulls a pair of sweatpants off the floor and then reaches for an oversized muscle tee from the nearest drawer, tugging it on quickly as he stumbles towards the bedroom door, pointedly ignoring the snickering from Kent that follows him. “Hey Shits,” Jack calls down the hallway, making his way back towards the living room, where it sounds like Shitty’s voice is coming from. “You just wake up?” 

Shitty stands in the middle of the living room, his flow sticking up high in the back, with red-lined pillow creases pressed into the right side of his face. He does look a little like an unwashed college student who’s just wandered in off the street which well, that's not entirely untrue. 

Jack braces both arms against the frame of the doorway into the living room, smirking. “Nice look you got there, Shits. If only Lardo could see you now.” 

Shitty swipes at his knotted-up bedhead muzzily, shooting Jack a doleful glare that quickly shifts into a much more focused gaze, his mustache twitching with amusement. “Well, don’t you look _relaxed_ , my dearest Jackalope.” 

Jack didn’t stop to check a mirror first but he’s sure that there’s got to be at least one visible hickey somewhere on his person; there’s definitely a bruise forming just below his traps, where Kent left a trail of bites up the back of Jack’s shoulders. He’d be a little more self-conscious under other circumstances, but there’s something about getting fucked that always leaves him pliant and lazy in a way that he so rarely lets himself be. So instead, Jack just shrugs. “I _am_ relaxed. We’re on vacation, remember?” 

Jack cocks his head slightly to the side, glancing backwards as Kent slowly pads down the hallway towards them until he’s ducking just under Jack’s braced arms, settling loosely into Jack’s side. His damp, riotous hair is curling slightly and falling into his eyes; he’s wearing another of Jack’s shirts, a Samwell shirsey this time, and it’s only friendship and a vague sense of polite behavior that keeps Jack from dragging him all the way back to the bedroom. 

“Sup, man,” Kent says, shooting Shitty a typical bro nod. “Heard you were hitting the fancy first class sauce a little hard today.” 

“Well, I got some shocking news on the car ride to the airport, brah,” Shitty says mildly. “Lot to process, you know?” 

Kent snorts, craning his neck upwards to fix Jack with an incredulous stare. “Babe. You didn’t seriously wait until the car ride to the airport to tell him, did you?” 

Jack watches Shitty mouth the word ‘babe’ in slow motion, like a car crash, before letting out a delighted laugh. “Parser, my dude, that is exactly what he did. But we are here now and let me tell you, I am _thrilled_ to find out what other new things I can learn about my good buddy Jackothy over here.” Shitty claps his hands together. “But first, I don’t suppose dinner is in the cards for the night?” 

Kent leans further into Jack’s side, so he’s almost completely tucked under Jack’s right arm, as he sneaks his left arm behind Jack’s middle, letting it settle on the outer edge of his hips. Jack feels himself melt downwards to meet him, like a puppet released from its strings. 

“There is this baller steakhouse on the strip that I was thinking of but….” Kent says, trailing off as he shoots pointed look at Shitty, who is currently listing lightly to the side, almost like he wants to topple over onto the couch next to him for another nap. “But I’m not opposed to spending a stupid amount of money to have them deliver.” 

Kent taps his index finger lightly, pointedly, against Jack’s ribs, and Jack curves a small smile down at him that Kent answers with a quick wink. The change of plans isn’t _just_ for Shitty’s sake; Kent knows the kind of mood that Jack’s in, and it’s not the kind of mood that lends itself to a glitzy restaurant crowded with people. 

Besides, it’s not as if they can touch like this in public. They’re not in Juniors anymore, they can’t leverage a handle of everclear as an excuse to go toppling into each other’s laps. 

Shitty breaks the moment by crashing straight downwards onto the couch with a loud huff. “Thank god, brah. Because like, I wanna make the most of this vacation and all but right now, all I want to do is stuff my face, maybe have a beer, and then pass out again.” 

Kent pushes away from Jack’s side, stepping around the cluster of couches and towards the direction of the kitchen. “Beer, I can handle. I’m pretty sure that one of my rookies left a six pack of Pacifico in my fridge. You wanna get fancy and add a lime?” 

Shitty salutes Kent from where he’s slumped into the soft brown leather couch cushions. “Fuck yeah, I wanna be fancy, man. What’re you having?” 

“Got a massive jug of watermelon agua fresca,” Kent tosses over his shoulder. “Zimms, you want in?” 

“Sure,” Jack calls out, before dropping down to the couch opposite from Shitty’s, curling one leg underneath him as he goes. It figures, of course, that this is the moment when Kit comes streaking out from underneath Shitty’s couch, darting under the coffee table in the middle, before leaping up onto the other couch and into Jack’s lap with a dull thump. At close to 18 pounds, she’s not exactly the smallest cat in the world, but she spent most of the December break taking running jumps just like this at Jack, so he’s gotten used to it. Jack puffs a laugh, reaching out with a hesitant palm to pat the silky gray fur on the top of her head. “There you are, you monster.” 

“Don’t call my princess a monster,” Kent shouts down the narrow hallway from the kitchen, and Jack just rolls his eyes. 

“I thought you said she didn’t like you,” Shitty accuses, peering curiously across the coffee table at Kit, like he’s trying to catch sight of a celebrity in the flesh. Which technically, Jack guesses he is. 

Kit starts to let out low, rumbling noises the more that Jack pets her, which doesn’t exactly make Jack’s case any tighter. “Just wait until Kent comes back,” Jack warns. “She only likes me when he’s not around and then when he is, she wants to make sure that I know who’s in charge around here.” 

Shitty just raises an eyebrow, like he doesn’t believe Jack at all, which again, isn’t helped by the way Kit rolls over onto her back, splaying her legs outwards so that Jack can scratch her stomach. “What an actress,” Jack huffs, but he can’t deny that he’s pleased about it anyways. 

Shitty makes a low, thoughtful humming noise that almost harmonizes with Kit’s purring. “Well well well. So this is what it looks like. Jacques Laurent Zimmermann, happily married man.” 

Jack ducks his head, hiding his face in the soft, long hair on Kit’s belly. He’s alright to let Shitty into this part of his life, but only up until a point. He’s not ready for anyone but Kent to see whatever’s on his face right now. “You know it’s not that simple.” 

“I’m sure it’s not,” Shitty says, followed by a soft crinkling sound, like he’s stretching out sideways on the couch. “But you two, you’ve got a nice vibe. I didn’t know what to expect after, you know....last time.”

Jack winces at the reminder that Shitty had a first row seat to the complete disaster that was Kent’s first visit to Samwell, raising his head up to toss Shitty a rueful smile. “Not my best look. Or his, well...we, uh, know each other a little too well sometimes.” 

“You’ve been through some shit,” Shitty agrees, “and I’m sure that I only know about half of it. But you know...as someone who’s been your friend for almost two years now, I gotta say...it’s pretty cool, getting to see you smile this much. I know that’s not like, a cool dude thing to say but fuck toxic masculinity, man. You’re my bro and I like seeing you happy.” 

Jack swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “Sacrament, Shits. Is this your romantic practice for when you finally ask out Lardo?” 

Shitty just throws a pillow at him, which doesn’t do anything except startle Kit out of Jack’s lap and send her off running. “Your chirpy little fucker. See if I ever confide in you again.” 

Kent takes this opportunity to clear his throat to announce his presence, so that both of their heads swivel sharply in his direction. He’s got one hip propped against a side table, Shitty’s bottle of Pacifico tucked haphazardly under one arm with a quarter lime sticking out of the mouth, and a glass of watermelon fresca in each hand. “Alright, Rose and Blanche, are you done gossiping about me now? And also, who the fuck scared off my cat?” 

Jack points an accusatory finger in Shitty’s direction but Shitty just shrugs remorselessly, accepting the beer that Kent hands over to him. “He deserved it.” 

Kent quirks an eyebrow. “I mean, I don’t doubt that.” 

Shitty barks out a laugh, pointing the neck of his beer bottle in Kent’s direction. “Oh, I am going to like getting to know you better, man.” 

“This trip was a terrible mistake,” Jack deadpans, but he still makes room for Kent to join him on the couch, to curl back into his side like an ellipses, before handing him the other glass of fresca. “I don’t think I want you two becoming friends.” 

“Aw, babe,” Kent says, reaching up his free hand to pat Jack lightly on one cheek. “You’re so full of shit.” 

“Actually, how about we move the entire Samwell Haus out here for the rest of the season?” Shitty cracks, so Jack reaches for the nearest pillow to lob it at this head, causing Shitty to squawk as he tries to shield his beer from the rogue projectile.

Jack settles back into the couch, resting an arm over the backs of Kent’s shoulders; the act of it causes Kent to shift until he’s all the way flush with Jack’s side again, close enough that Jack can press a small kiss into the crown of his head, letting his free hand fall to the edge of Kent’s shirtsleeves, toying idly with the hem. He takes a long, cool sip of the watermelon fresca before pressing the freezing cold glass up against the skin of his forehead, the sensation creating a mental reset. The panic of this morning suddenly feels very far away, like it might’ve happened to someone else entirely. The reality of this moment and every farcical decision that led up to this bizarre collision of his two worlds suddenly feels both very small and entirely momentous. 

It all seemed so impossible until about thirty seconds ago and now here they are; Jack already can’t wait to see how the rest of the week goes. 

Kent’s right; he is absolutely full of shit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part two: 
> 
> Junior year. Closets are complicated and messy and personal. Shitty pines, like a lot. There's a handful of misunderstandings. Kent and Lardo are the voices of reason because duh, of course they are.
> 
> Warning for accidental outing but nothing bad befalls anyone in the process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I'd qualify the sodium content of this installment as....medium? Honestly, a lot lower than expected when I started out. thank you so much to sockich and lomitzz for being my sounding board for this one. 
> 
> Also yes, I fully stole a line from The Great for this. It was just too good and I'm not sorry. 
> 
> Writing this has been....the thing that I do when I feel like I'm about to go crazy these days. I hope that it gives you a moment of joy or two in the same way that it has for me. Stay safe, everyone.

Shitty’s comfortable keeping secrets. The same stoner chill that allows people to confide in him usually also keeps others from thinking he knows shit about anything. That’s just the way he likes it. 

High trust, low pressure. 

Sure, the whole “Jack is secretly married to a man and that man is NHL Star Kent Parson” thing is….not exactly a low pressure secret but Jack’s his boy, so the tricky loop of keeping that one close to the vest usually doesn’t even register as an issue. 

Heteronormativity is a hell of a fucking drug, anyways. Parse spent the first two weeks of the semester at an air bnb just off campus and Jack showed his face at the Haus maybe once in those two weeks to grab some clothes. And guess what: no one blinked a fucking eye. Holster kept going on about how chill Parse was and how he wished _he_ had rich friends from high school who could roll up and hang for a while. 

Spoiler alert: Shitty can guarantee, with 100% solid gold certainty after the week he spent in Vegas with Jack and Parse, that the only reason Parse even made that air bnb reservation was so they could fuck as loudly and as often as they wanted to. 

And honestly, thank god for that, because otherwise Shitty’s pretty sure that Jack would’ve gone through the fucking roof those first few weeks as soon as he realized the coaches recruited some kid with just two years of coed, recreational hockey experience to come play on his wing. 

Because sure, Jack did still lose his shit a little and he definitely complained at Shitty and Parse about it for an hour straight over a game of FIFA. But Parse is literal fucking magic when it comes to managing rookies _and_ he’s the Jack Zimmermann whisperer. Plus Shitty would like to believe that they’ve gotten closer, him and Jack, since last year -- closer in a way that makes it a hell of a lot easier for them to call each other out on their shit. Which is mad important, except for when Jack is chirping him about Lardo, but she’s in Kenya this semester, so whatever. It doesn’t matter. So what if Shitty wakes up every morning and reaches for his phone first thing to check to see if he’s gotten any WhatsApp messages from her and sure, maybe he’s pining a little, but that’s besides the goddamn point, Jacques Laurent. 

The point is, between the three of them, they came up with an actual training strategy that Jack could live with that wouldn’t also make this poor Bitty kid want to drop out of school. Great, golden, perfect. Ransom dubbed this year’s pre-season “the least bitchy that he’d ever seen Jack ever,” which if Shitty is being honest, was still pretty bitchy but hey, that’s Jack. That’s part of his charm. 

Everything seemed like for once, it might actually go super smoothly for the Samwell Hockey team. 

And then Bitty had to go and have a crush on Jack. Married, uninterested, closeted Jack. 

That’s when the fucking shit hit the fan.

.

Actually, let’s track back.

Because Shitty can admit, he’s at least a little bit at fault here. Bitty came out to him and it was a good moment, a truly excellent moment of trust and bravery. Shitty doesn’t like to pat himself on the back for these kinds of things, but it feels good, to be the person that people choose to come out to. 

It lets Shitty know that he’s doing something right, that he’s already managed to be a better dude than his father could ever hope to be and it’s not like that’s a particularly high bar, sure, but still. It’s nice, knowing that in the battle between nature versus nurture, sometimes nurture doesn’t have to win if it fucking blows. Shitty Knight makes his own destiny, brahs. 

But then Bitty turned those sweet Bambie eyes in Shitty’s direction and said, all sad and small, “Lord, I don’t know, Shitty. I came here for a reason but now that I’m here….it would be easier, I think, if I wasn’t alone on the team, you know?” 

And well, Shitty had a moment of wildly stupid weakness. He couldn’t help it; he liked to be the one to fix things so he thought to himself, alright, well, shit. I can fix that. He wasn’t going to tell Bitty about Jack; that would be breaking so many levels of the bro code and the ally code and Shitty’s not about that life. He’s not about giving his best friend a solid excuse to murder him in his sleep, either. 

But….Jack’s blossomed like a beautiful, emotionally stunted hockey flower ever since he got back together with Parse, so Shitty figured what the hell, it’s worth a shot. Maybe Jack would be open to the idea of becoming the world’s most unexpected gay mentor to a tiny figure skater from Georgia. What the hell, right? 

Stranger things have happened. 

So, Shitty picked a day and a time, and he went for it. They’d just won their third game of the season thanks to a last minute shorty from the man of the hour himself. Jack was all smiles in the locker room afterwards, clapping shoulders and handing out stilted compliments, oblivious to the fact that he was totally starting to freak some of their other teammates out. 

“Yo, Shits?” Ransom hisses, slapping Shitty in the arm with his elbow pads to get his attention. “Has Jack been replaced by a pod person?” 

Shitty leans back against his locker, taking in the sight of Jack, half undressed on a locker room bench and thumbing out a message on his phone, probably to Parse. Shitty’s pretty sure that tonight’s game won Jack some sort of sex bet on top of snagging him an actual beaut of a win, so if Shitty were a betting man, he’d say Jack is just extra feeling himself tonight. And that’s cool; it’s a good night if Jack finishes a game and doesn’t let himself immediately get too deep inside his own head that he can’t appreciate the victory. 

But Shitty can’t say any of that, so he just shrugs. “Our team is clicking better than ever this year. You know he wants a ship before he graduates, Rans. Maybe he really thinks we can do it this time.” 

Ransom just raises an eyebrow. “If you say so, my dude.” 

“Hey come on,” Holster shouts across the locker room, throwing a towel in Ransom’s direction. “How are we gonna celebrate properly if we never make it out of Faber? C’mon, broskis, let’s get a fucking move on.” 

The promise of a post-game kegger is enough motivation to get everyone racing to and from the showers, clearing the room quickly, which is pretty par for the fucking course. Five minutes later, it’s just Shitty and Jack, dressing in silence. 

Shitty grabs hold of his boots, going to sit next to Jack on a bench to pull them on. “Hey brah. Can I talk to you about something?” 

Jack stills for a moment, in the middle of lacing up his own boots. “Sure, Shits. What’s up?” 

“It’s about Bitty,” Shitty says. “About uh, you know. So when he came out to me, he said something that like, stuck with me? And I wanted to know what you thought about it.” 

“Shits,” Jack says with a groan, but he leans into Shitty a little closer, pitching his voice low. “I’m not your queer-to-English translator. I’m not exactly...I’m not exactly part of that corner of Samwell life.” 

“Yeah, that’s uh....that’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about,” Shitty starts, shaking his head slightly so that his flow falls out of his eyes. “He said that it would help, uh. If he knew he wasn’t the only one on the team, you know?” 

Jack’s head snaps up, expression shuttering into a blank, hard shell. “You didn’t -- ”

Shitty throws both hands up. “I didn’t! Dude, I did not, I swear on the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I would never do that to you. I just wondered, I guess...if you ever considered, I don’t know, telling anyone else on the team.” 

Jack drags a hand over his face, his expression cracking open into a sudden, deep exhaustion. “Shits, I like Bittle; he’s shaping up to be a decent winger. But I barely know him.” 

Ten minutes ago, Jack was all smiles, and now he’s the furthest thing from it; Shitty hates the churn in his stomach, how it feels like guilt. “You’re right, man. You’re right. It was just a stupid idea. C’mon, let’s go back to the Haus, do some celebrating?” 

Jack smiles weakly. “Sure, man. Although I have to say, Haus parties just aren’t the same without you trailing after Lardo like a lost puppy.” 

“Okay, wow, rude,” Shitty says, holding up a finger. “First of all, I do not trail. I am not lost. I am following a goddess, a queen, and I know exactly where I’m going even if I don’t always know the destination.”

Jack just raises an eyebrow, the chirpy little shit. “Sounds exactly like something a lost puppy would say, eh?” 

Shitty punches him in the shoulder in retaliation but the punch winds up hurting him more than it hurts Jack, and then Jack’s laughing at him again, and Shitty figures, alright, well that’s that, then. 

Maybe it’ll be the last they talk about it, or maybe it won’t. But either way, it wasn’t a big deal. 

If Shitty had been a little less tired from the game and maybe a little less focused on Jack, he might’ve noticed that someone forgot their phone on the bench opposite them. 

And if he _had_ noticed the phone, it might’ve occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, the owner of the phone would be coming back to the locker room to get it. 

But that part of the story comes later.

.

“So, who’s Lardo? Our team manager, right?”

Shitty’s head snaps up from where it was buried in an annotated copy of _King Hedley II_ , the pen cap of a highlighter stuck between his lips. It’s a slow day at the Haus; Bitty is baking cookies and Jack is sketching potential plays onto scrap paper, but just about everyone else is holed up at the library studying for Fall semester finals. 

Shitty spits out the pen cap. “Uh, yeah. Lardo’s our team manager. She’s in Nairobi studying abroad this semester but she’ll be back in January, so you’ll meet her soon enough. She’s, uh, chill.” 

On the other side of the kitchen table, Jack glances up at Shitty out of the corner of his eye and smirks. Shitty resists the urge to throw the pen cap at him, but only barely. 

“Huh,” Bitty says, as he continues to hand mix the cookie batter. Whatever it is, it smells good, like butter and nuts and sugar. “From the stories I heard about Lardo from Ransom and Holster, I kind of expected Lardo to be…” 

“A six foot tall dude named Chad?” Shitty supplies. “Yeah, like I said. She’s chill. The broiest of us all, really. She’s also, like...a super talented artist. You’ll like her, for sure….and you shut up, Jackothy,” Shitty says, pointing his finger in Jack’s direction, and this time, he really does throw the pen cap. 

Jack holds up both hands. “I didn’t say anything, Shits!” 

“Your dumb chiseled face said it all!” Shitty tosses back. “Lardo is a chill bro and a truly rad soul and you know that I value her friendship too much to do anything to compromise it. So just shut that face up, Laurent.” 

“Oh Lord,” Bitty says, setting the mixing bowl down onto the counter with a small thump. “It feels like I stepped in it a bit, here.” 

Shitty feels the corners of his lips tugging downwards into a frown. It’s...complicated, how he feels about Lardo. Or maybe it’s not complicated at all, it’s more like Shitty doesn’t want to be the one who makes the first move. He doesn’t want to be that gross dude who isn’t okay with being just friends with a woman. He’s happy to let things float along and if it happens, it happens; if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine, he’ll just pine forever until he dies of old age, or until Ruth Bader Ginsburg decides to make him her super hot young new husband. 

It’s fine. It’s all super chill. 

When Shitty looks over at Jack, it’s to find Jack looking at him with a small, sympathetic furrow between his brows. “Sorry, Shits,” Jack says, “but you know...sometimes it is worth it, to take that risk.” 

“Yeah, I guess _you’d_ know,” Shitty grumbles. 

Jack just raises both eyebrows, leveling Shitty with what he’s come to fondly refer to as the patented “What the Fuck, Byron” glare.

“Sorry, sorry,” Shitty says, reaching across the table to take back his pen cap. “Call a truce?” 

Jack rolls his eyes, but nods. Shitty settles backwards into his kitchen chair, flipping open his slim August Wilson paperback once more and folding it in half. 

On the other side of the kitchen, Bitty’s gaze is fixed firmly on Jack, both wide-eyed and thoughtful.

.

And so the end of the semester comes and goes. Lardo and her parents go out west to visit cousins out in the Bay Area for the holidays, and Shitty allows himself a full day to sulk over the fact that he’s not even going to get to see her for a day or two until school starts up again. Meanwhile, the Aces have a string of home games over the holidays, so the Zimmernann-Parson clan is holed up in Las Vegas again this year, probably enjoying each other’s company, the bastards.

Shitty, on the other hand, spends all of the holiday break sending Jack and Lardo increasingly tragic selfies to try and get across how miserable he is, stuck at home with his family for weeks at a time. In return, he gets pictures of sculptures made out of sticky rice and predictably, a photo of Bad Bob trying to score on Parse in a game of pick-up in Parse’s driveway. 

But the SMH group chat blows up his phone all day long; it’s mostly Ransom and Holster pining after each other, even though they could just be texting each other, but Bitty texts a lot too, with the odd here or there from Jack. Ollie and Wicks keep texting curiously coded messages, like they’re only meant to be for each other, which again...dudes, just text each other. 

A couple of days before the end of break, he gets a text from Jack right as he’s flopped in bed, watching Mulholland Drive, and waiting for his edible to kick in. 

**From: Jackalope**  
Bittle sure does text a lot, eh? 

Shitty thumbs open his phone to reply but then the monster pops up from behind the dumpster at the diner, and even though he’s seen this movie before and he knew it was coming, Shitty’s just high enough to shriek and throw his phone to the floor, where it lays forgotten for the remainder of the movie.

The next morning, Shitty reads back over his texts and thinks to himself, _huh, I don't think Bittle texts the group chat that much._

But it doesn't seem important.

.

The first three weeks of Spring semester can pretty much be summed up for Shitty in one word: Lardo.

Stoned cuddles with Lardo. Coffee with Lardo followed by hours spent in Lardo’s studio for the semester, watching her start putting brush to canvas for this semester’s Visual Thinking course. Sneaking into a frat party with Lardo and distracting all of the dumb bros while she took off for their kitchen, snatching up all of their nice craft microbrews and smuggling them out in her massive tote bag. 

They had a whole semester of lost time to make up for; there were hours and hours of stories to swap. Not that anything Shitty got up to last semester had anything on the three and a half months that Lardo spent in Nairobi, immersing herself in the local art collectives, but still. 

The point is, Shitty was real fucking distracted. He wasn’t paying a hell of a lot of attention to things that he normally would’ve had an eagle eye for. Like say, how Bitty kept showing up at the Haus when Jack was studying in the kitchen. 

Or say, like how Bitty would linger after team practice to talk to Jack. 

It’s not that he didn’t notice these things; he absolutely did. But he didn’t give them a lot of extra thought or attention. It was all just...background noise, compared to everything else. 

Until Jack comes bulldozing his way through the closed bathroom door at 8 AM on a Wednesday morning, shoving Shitty up against the bathroom counter while he was in the middle of brushing his teeth. 

“You fucking told Bittle about me, I can’t fucking believe you,” Jack spits. “Whatever happened to, ‘I swear on the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg?’” 

“I didn’t,” Shitty insists, but since he’s speaking around the shape of his toothbrush, it comes out more as ‘dint.’ Shitty takes his toothbrush out of his mouth, deciding to just ignore the glob of toothpaste that’s gathered at the corner of his mouth. “What happened?”

“He tried to kiss me,” Jack says. “We finished our checking practice and then we were talking about strategy for the next game in the locker room, and he just...he leaned over and tried to kiss me.” Jack pauses, the corners of his lips tightening. 

“ _Well_ ,” Shitty says, drawing out the ‘e’ in well. “You are a pretty fine specimen of man meat, my dear Jackalope. He’s allowed to have a crush. Doesn’t mean he knows anything.” 

Jack scoffs. “See, that’s what I would’ve thought, Shits. Until he got all nervous and started rambling about how it was okay, actually, because he knew about me, and I didn’t have to explain anything to him. Shitty. Why wouldn’t I have to fucking explain anything to him?”

Shitty swipes at the toothpaste gathered at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Dude, I’m serious. I don’t know.” 

Jack pushes out an exhale. “You’re the only person at Samwell I’ve told.” 

“And I’m fucking tell you, man, I don’t know how he knows anything!” Shitty pushes Jack away, so he can stand up straight properly. It’s been a long ass time since he’s seen this side of Jack, the side of Jack that gets tunnel vision, that can’t help but get a little mean about it. Shitty has to admit, he did not miss it at all. “What else did you say to Bitty?” 

“I told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. That I’m with someone but we have good reasons to keep it quiet.” Jack blows out a breath, throwing his hands up into the air. “I don’t fucking know, Shits, I said anything that came to my mind that I thought might keep him from telling the whole fucking campus about me.” 

Shitty winces to himself. Poor Bitty; that sounds like a hell of a bad first rejection. “I’m sure he won’t.” 

Jack just stares for a beat, and then shakes his head. “I never should’ve fucking trusted you with this,” he says, and then he’s out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

.

Shitty tells himself it’ll blow over in a day.

And then he tells himself it’ll blow over in a couple of days. 

_Then_ he tells himself it’ll all blow over in a week or so. 

Except then two full weeks go by with nothing but stubborn, annoyed silence from this best friend, like Jack’s some sort of pissy, French-Canadian brick wall. Even Ransom and Holster start to notice what’s going on after a few days and then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump until they start peppering Shitty with questions that he can’t answer. 

Johnson stops him in the locker room once with a solemn clap on the shoulder and an entirely cryptic ‘the narrative of this universe will right itself,’ which is just about as un-fucking-helpful as anything else that comes out of Johnson’s mouth. 

And it just, it sucks. Shitty wants to be pissed; he is pretty pissed a lot of the time, actually, because fuck your complete lack of communication skills, Jack Zimmermann. 

But mostly, he just misses his best friend. And it sucks.

.

Shitty shuffles out of his 2 PM “Sociology of Sex and Gender” lecture, digging his phone out of his back pocket as he goes, thumbing idly through the usual WaPo alerts and texts from Lardo about the one dude in her printmaking course that she always wants to stab in the eye with a pen. It’s all pretty business as usual until he sees one text that’s super out of the ordinary.

 **From: Parse**  
yo can we talk? just got home frm practice, so around on skype whenever 

“Well, that’s ominous,” Shitty mutters to himself, as he pockets his phone again and sets off towards the Haus at a rapid pace. He and Parse are not regular texting buddies; they’re more like, every once in a while texting each other about a goal or what to buy Jack for his birthday buddies. 

The only Skyping they’ve ever done has been accidental, when Shitty bulldozes his way into Jack’s room. But even then, Shitty’s tried to cut down on that habit at least a little after interrupting one too many Skype sex sessions. See: all the ways in which he does not want to give his best friend reasons to murder him in his sleep. 

Shitty makes a beeline for the stairs the second that he enters the Haus; Jack has a “Russia in World War II” seminar that won’t be over for another hour, thankfully, but Shitty doesn’t want to have to put up with anyone else in the meantime. 

So, he settles cross-legged onto his bed, opens up his MacBook, and resists the urge to roll a blunt to calm his nerves. He logs into Skype and seconds later, Parse is calling him. 

Shitty takes a deep breath, and hits accept. The video loads, revealing Parse sitting at his kitchen island, in a heather-grey Aces muscle-tee, frowning softly. 

“Hey man,” Shitty says, a little too casually. “What’s up?” 

“We need to talk about this Eric Bittle situation,” Parse says bluntly which hey, Shitty can admire a man who doesn’t beat around the bush. It’s a solid reminder that for all that Parse might _look_ like one of the preppy douche-bros that Shitty went to high school with, the kind of guy that can talk and talk and not say anything at all, Parse clearly lived a very different life than Shitty did before hockey made him rich and famous. 

Still, it’d be nice to have a little more conversational foreplay, give Shitty some time to organize his thoughts. He fiddles with the cord of his headphones for a second, waiting for a solid argument to float its way towards the surface of his mind, but he doesn’t actually know which way this conversation is gonna go. Shitty lets out a sigh, figuring that he might as well just dive in. “Is this like...a jealous partner thing? Because dude, that’s a conversation you should be having with Jack, not me.” 

Parse wrinkles his nose. “Nah, man, not at all.” He waves a dismissive hand, letting out a little snort. “Jack flew halfway around the world to see me after sleeping with some chick and then freaking out about it, even though we hadn’t really spoken in years. I know how Jack feels about me. That’s not the issue here.” 

Shitty relaxes, just a little. “So, what is the issue?” 

Parse is silent for a beat, slumping forward to rest his chin on one hand. “It’s like...for me, being gay is just like, a dumb practical joke from the universe. Here, let’s take this gay kid and give him this crazy passion for hockey, a sport run by dumbfuck homophobes. So like, if there is a God, why did she make me gay? For comedy, I guess.” Parse smiles grimly. “So I roll with it, whatever. But it’s not like that for Jack. He...being queer, for Jack, is like another way that he’s hardwired for failure, you know?” 

Shitty swallows hard. It feels obvious, now that Parse has pointed it out, because of course that’s how Jack sees it. 

Parse leans back in his seat, raising both hands like he’s mimicking a scale. “So for Jack, it’s like….on the one hand, you have option A and option A is completely repressing your shit so you don’t have to worry about anyone finding out the truth.” Parse lifts his left hand above his right, shifting the scale. “And then you have option B, where you let people in a little, but then you have to deal with the shitty anxiety that comes with it, because now the truth isn’t just in your own hands anymore.” 

“Both of those options kinda blow,” Shitty admits. 

Parse slaps both of his hands to his concrete countertop, leveling Shitty with a “no duh” stare through the screen. “Yeah, no shit, bro. And look -- obviously I’m selfishly fucking thrilled that he’s decided to opt out of the complete repression route but the last time we followed the road down Option B, it didn’t exactly turn out so hot.” 

Shitty feels his stomach turn; he knows exactly what Parse means by _that_. “You don’t think he’s -- ”

“Using?” Parse supplies, with a quirk of an eyebrow. “No, I don’t and believe me, if I did think that, that _would_ be a completely different fucking conversation. But all I’m saying is, man, this shit isn’t as easy as either being in the closet, or out of it. Like...don’t get me wrong, I think Jack should have gay friends. My cat sitter is a lesbian. My favorite member of the Ice Girls is a lesbian. I should not have more gay friends here than Jack does at Samwell. But like...there’s gotta be some fucking trust there, he’s gotta have control over who he opens up to, or else he’s gonna drive himself crazy with the what-ifs. The lack of control is the thing that he’s actually pissed about. That’s all.” 

Parse blows out a breath, slumping back down to rest his chin on his hands, which Shitty guesses means he must be done talking. 

“You’re a good husband,” Shitty says, for lack of anything else to say. He feels a little stupid; he’s not used to feeling stupid. 

“Thanks, I try,” Parse says dryly. “I’ve been in therapy since I was nineteen so you know, I’ve picked up some shit.” 

“Therapy,” Shitty says slowly, “huh. I’ve heard a rumor that can be helpful.” 

Parse just rolls his eyes, but the corner of his lips tug upwards into a smile, so Shitty’ll take that as a win. 

“Why are you telling me all this?” Shitty asks. 

“You’re his best friend,” Parse says simply. “And you should know this shit. He’s not gonna tell you because that’s not how Jack does things and sure, I’m probably like, way overstepping here but….I worry. I’m always gonna worry about him. So this is me, dealing with that.” 

“Sometimes you gotta pass the baton,” Shitty agrees. “Cool. Ten-four, Parson. I appreciate the talk, bro, seriously, but also....this shit has been stressful so I’m gonna go smoke a blunt now.” 

Parse shoots him a jaunty salute, and then hangs up.

.

Shitty doesn’t smoke a blunt. Instead, he goes over to Lardo’s dorm room, curls up on the shaggy rug on the floor of her single, and waits patiently for Lardo to pull out her trusty, purple glitter colored bong.

“Alright, my dude,” Lardo says, flicking the switch of her lighter at the same time as she sinks down into a cross-legged seat next to him in one smooth motion, because she’s just that cool. “You’re in a pickle. It’s not really your fault. It’s not really anyone’s fault. It’s more like...a comedy of errors, only more dramatic ‘cause it’s Jack.” 

Shitty accepts her offering of the bowl, frowning. “How do you -- ”

“He told me,” Lardo says with a simple shrug. She settles in closer to him, a warm weight at Shitty’s side. Her zip-up hoodie is also purple, just like the bong. “He’s pissed at you but as it turns out, when he’s pissed at you, that leaves the number of people he can talk to around here at...basically zero. It’s chill, we had a beautiful bisexual bonding moment. His husband’s a little too pretty for my tastes but _I’m_ not the one married to the guy, so whatever.” 

Shitty inhales, humming thoughtfully. “I just got done Skyping with him.” 

Lardo turns her head, frowning. “With Jack? He lives literally right next to you.” 

“Nah, with Parse,” Shitty says, passing the bong and lighter back over to Lardo. “I think he’s worried this whole mess is gonna scare Jack off from being open with the people that he wants to be open with.” 

“I’m good,” Lardo says, waving away the bong, so Shitty sets it down to the side, balanced carefully between the edge of the rug and the corner of Lardo’s bed frame. “I mean, like...it’s a mess but it’s not a big mess, you know? Bitty’s allowed to have a crush, he just bungled the landing. Didn’t have all the right information. But he’s an eighteen year old gay man, so this is like, the first time he’s ever been allowed to have a crush.” 

“I didn’t tell him about Jack,” Shitty says, because it’s important to him that Lardo knows that.

“I know you didn’t,” Lardo says casually, like it wasn’t even a question, and something in Shitty’s chest unloosens. “And I think logically, deep down, Jack knows you didn’t either. He’s just pissed and he needs someone to be pissed at. But the solution is obvious: go to the source. Just _ask_ Bitty how he knows. And then go from there.” 

“Huh,” Shitty says. “You’re a genius.” 

“I know I am,” Lardo says indulgently, “but also, you’ve just been acting really stupid, man.” 

Shitty leans over, kissing her on the forehead, before leaping to his feet. “Gotta go, Lards, I have a crisis to solve.” 

Shitty sprints down the stairs and out into the weak February light, slipping slightly as snow crunches underneath his boots. It’s cold -- well, it’s not cold for him, because he’s used to it, but it’s definitely cold for Bitty, which means that he’s either getting a very warm coffee drink or he’s sitting by the best heater on the third floor in the library. 

Shitty’s first guess was on the money; Bitty is just stepping out of the student cafe with a to-go coffee mug, his scarf wrapped all the way around his neck and half of his face, when Shitty comes skidding up next to him. 

“Bits my Bitty dear Bittleson,” Shitty trills, slipping in next to him on the narrow pathway back towards the dorm buildings. “Can we talk?” 

Bitty lets out a little soft sigh; he looks, Shitty has to admit, completely miserable and unbearably young. “Sure, Shitty.” 

“Okay, so….” Shitty stuffs his hands in his pockets, shuffling along nervously. “You know that thing...that you know? How….how did you come to…know it?” 

Bitty casts him an incredulous glare, with both eyebrows raised. Shitty winces. Yeah, that was not his most eloquent moment. 

They walk along the path in silence for a few moments before Bitty clears his throat. “It was last semester. After one of our first games? I forgot my phone in the locker room and when I went back to get it, I overheard you and Jack talking. I swear, I didn’t mean to, I mean, Lord, it was just a silly accident!” 

Bitty lets out a loud breath and it condenses in the air in front of him. “And I don’t know...I hated Jack at first, and then he turned out to be really helpful, in his own weird Jack way, in getting me adjusted to the team. I guess I thought, if he needed someone to help him too, that person could be me.” 

Shitty nods along to show that he’s listening. Privately, he’s pretty sure that this whole thing has less to do with Jack and more to do with Bitty not wanting to feel alone anymore but then again, it’s not like that’s something Shitty can actually understand, not in the way Bitty means it. So instead of saying any of that, Shitty just slings an arm around Bitty’s shoulders. “Jack’s a complicated dude, Itty Bitty. And who knows, maybe in another life, you would’ve been right. But in this life, that’s just not the way cookies crumbled, you dig?” 

Bitty shrugs, making a soft sniffling noise that he wipes away with one gloved hand. “So uh, how serious _is_ his relationship?” 

Shitty barks out a laugh because shit, man, if only Bitty knew. “Let’s just say that they’re in it for the long haul.” 

“Even though they have to hide?” Bitty asks, voice small. 

Shitty ruffles the top of Bitty’s head, for lack of anything better to do. “I mean, I’m not an expert on this shit, my dude. But it’s like...for Jack, I don’t think he’s hiding in any of the ways that are important to him. Both of their families know, their closest friends know. For him, I think that’s enough.” 

“I think….Lord, this is embarrassing,” Bitty starts. “But I guess whenever I’ve thought about telling my parents, especially Coach….I figured it would be easier, if I was with someone that I thought he could approve of.” 

The _someone like Jack_ goes unsaid, but Shitty still hears it loud and clear. 

“But...you get how that’s not entirely fair to the guy you’d want to bring home, right?” Shitty asks, not unkindly. 

Bitty’s shoulders slump a little. “Yeah, I guess. Do you think Jack will ever forgive me?” 

Shitty pulls Bitty closer into a half-hug. “Dude, I don’t even think he’s mad at you, he’s just like, mad awkward and doesn’t know how to handle that kind of attention if it's not coming from the one person he expects it from. He’s definitely pissed at me because he thinks I turned narc on him but it’s chill, I’ll smooth it all over.” 

“Thank the Lord,” Bitty breathes, casting his face upwards towards the grey sky. “Because I really miss baking pies in that oven.”

.

“Okay, so here’s the thing,” Shitty announces, busting his way through the bathroom to Jack’s bedroom. Jack, who is sitting at his desk watching a documentary, startles and pulls out his earbuds.

“Franchement,” Jack says flatly, rolling around in his desk chair. 

“I don’t know what that means!” Shitty says, closing the bathroom door and then leaning back against it. 

Jack lets out an exasperated sigh, crossing both arms in front of his chest. Shitty waits for a beat and then realizes that Jack isn’t going to say anything else. 

“Dude, I’m really fucking sorry that someone found out in a way that you couldn’t control. I know that that sucks for you. I know that I don’t like, _get_ it,” Shitty says, waving his hands in front of his face in exclamation. “But it was also an accident. Bitty fucking accidentally overheard us talking in the locker room one day. So either you can be pissed at me for the rest of our college career or we can find a way to move past this because my dude, there’s not really a third option here.” 

Jack lifts one hand up to rub at the wrinkle in his forehead. “Fuck. _Fuck_.” 

“Is that...a maybe?” Shitty guesses. “He’s not gonna tell anyone, you know. I made him swear to Beyoncé.” 

“That serious, huh?” Jack asks dryly. “No, I know, it’s just….this isn’t easy for me. I….” Jack’s hands fall into his lap, where he clasps them together, wringing them tightly. “I never know what the right answer is. Before, in Rimouski, when it was just me and Parse….I don’t know, I guess I told myself it was better, that we were the only ones who knew, but also the fear of anyone finding out, well...that didn’t do me any favors either.”

Jack shrugs his shoulders. “I like not having to hide from the people I care about. But the fear is still there. I know it’s not your fault. It just….is.” 

Something inside of Shitty’s chest twists and he pushes off from the back of the door, taking a step towards Jack. “Jackothy, my beautiful bisexual hockey angel, can I give you a hug?” 

Jack puffs out a small laugh. “Yeah, alright.” 

Shitty all but clambers into Jack’s lap, wrapping him up in a big bear hug, as Jack’s arms come up to wrap around his middle, squeezing tight. Shitty hooks his chin over Jack’s shoulder, playfully digging the scratch of his mustache into Jack’s neck. 

“Ugh, you’re like a woolly mammoth,” Jack complains, but he doesn’t push away, either. 

So, that’s another win for the day.

.

Shitty’s not sure what wakes him up. There’s a lot of odd creaks in an old house like this one; the window panes rattle and the steps groan whenever you step down on them in the middle of the night, and the rail on the staircase makes a strange little whining noise when you twist your hand around it too tightly.

But you get used to that kind of noise. It becomes normal, background white noise. 

The faint clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen, however -- that’s a little less normal. 

Shitty buries his face in his pillow for just a second and lets out a groan. “C’mon, Bitty, it’s a Friday morning.” 

By some miracle of college scheduling, not a single resident of the Haus has any Friday classes. They also won’t have hockey practice again until Sunday morning; Fridays are for sleeping the fuck in. 

Shitty waits a beat and then sighs, pushing his blankets back and hauling himself out of bed. Shitty pads his way down the stairs, minding the creaky step, and rounds the corner to the kitchen where he finds, unsurprisingly, Eric Bittle in the middle of making pancakes. 

“Oh good, you’re up,” Bitty says brightly, like this is a normal thing to be doing. 

“Bits,” Shitty says groggily, rubbing at the crust around his left eye. “What the fuck.” 

Bitty turns around, crossing his arms as he leans back against the kitchen counter. “Jack canceled checking practice. Jack never cancels checking practice, not even after I made a damn fool of myself trying to kiss him and he couldn’t look me in the eyes for two weeks. I think something might be wrong.” 

“That is….weird,” Shitty admits, leaning against the door jamb. “Wait, hold on…” Shitty’s been so caught up in solving the weird, semi crisis and this semester’s Con Law class and also, you know, his perpetual pining over Lardo, that he kinda lost track of the NHL Bruins schedule. 

Shitty does some mental calculation, and then pushes away from the doorway to crane his neck out the kitchen window. Outside, parked next to a snow drift that the LAX bros tried to shape into a dick, is a nondescript, but nonetheless expensive-looking Audi sedan. Shitty doesn’t even get the chance to say _nothing’s wrong, Bits,_ because then there’s a shuffle of feet behind him, followed by a tired croak of “please tell me there’s coffee.” 

Shitty whirls around, grinning. “Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in. You don’t play in Boston until Monday night, my dude.” 

Parse yawns loudly into the back of his hand. Predictably, he’s wearing a pair of Samwell red sweatpants that hang down low around his hips, paired with an old Océanic sweatshirt that has the number one blazoned on the arms. There are, also predictably, a cluster of hickeys just beneath his jawline. “I’m a healthy scratch tonight against Providence since I played almost forty minutes two nights in a row this week, so the coach let me off the hook for the team curfew.” 

Shitty smirks. “And what did you have to tell him to get you off the hook?” 

Parse waggles his eyebrows. “Told him I had a hot date in Boston and since he thinks I don’t get out enough, he rolled with it.” 

“Dude, don’t ever tell Seguin about that, he’ll flip a shit,” Shitty guffaws, but he’s holding out a hand for a high five anyways. 

“He can’t look Segs in the eye ‘cause he thinks he’s hot,” Jack’s voice pipes up from the darkness of the stairwell, as he comes to stand behind Parse, both arms snaking around Parse’s middle as he hooks his chin over Parse’s left shoulder. 

Parse turns his chin up towards Jack with a small scowl. “I told you that in fucking confidence, you dick.” Parse turns back towards Shitty, the sly smirk that he sends Shitty’s way the only hint that Shitty gets for which way this conversation is gonna go. “You think Segs could be into banging married dudes? Hypothetical question.” 

Jack raises his left hand to tickle alongside the left side of Parse’s ribs, eliciting a loud squawk as Parse squirms away from him. “What the _fuck_ , Zimms,” Parse whines, as he dances out of reach of Jack’s arms. 

Jack takes up Shitty’s former position against the door jamb, with a slow, easy grin crossing his face. “Morning, Shits. Morning, Bittle.” 

Bitty looks between Jack and Parse, his expression dazed. “Wait. You’re...you’re in some of the YouTube highlights that Jack sent me to study from.” 

Parse raises both eyebrows, turning to face Jack with a smug grin. “Oh really, babe?” 

Jack just stares blankly back. “What? I play well with speed on my wing. I play well with speed on my wing _because_ of you.” 

Parse rolls his eyes before reaching out a hand for Bitty to shake. “Kent Parson. Mysterious absent partner and top NHL goal scorer.” 

“Eric Bittle. Bitty,” Bitty says, still looking a little dazed. He shakes his head slightly, blonde eyebrows furrowing together. “Wait, did you say you’re _married_?” 

“Five years this May,” Parse sings jauntily, pulling a couple of mugs down from the cupboard with one hand and reaching for the mostly full coffee pot with the other. “Don’t worry, kiddo, it’s not exactly common knowledge. I don’t take your homewrecking attempts personally.” 

Bitty chokes a little on thin air while Jack drops his face into one palm. 

“What?” Parse says with a shrug. “We gotta joke about it, otherwise it’s just awkward.” Parse turns around, with a coffee mug in each hand, one of which he uses to gesture towards Jack. “You can’t let shit get awkward between teammates. Relentless chirping and pretending like weird shit is actually funny is the only way through, babe.” 

Jack just cracks a wry grin, shaking his head. Truly, a Jack that’s just gotten laid is another level of magically relaxed. “Kenny, can we go back to bed now?” 

In response, Parse just leans towards Shitty with a conspiratorial wink. “Wear headphones if you come back upstairs.” 

Shitty shoves him in the arm, causing some of the coffee to slosh over the size of the mugs and onto the floor. “Yeah, yeah, get outta here, lovebirds.” 

Jack disappears up the stairs, with Parse following him swiftly after, leaving Bitty and Shitty behind in the aftermath of their early morning chirp tornado. 

Bitty just stands there for a solid minute, still with his arms crossed over his chest. “Samwell Hockey was _not_ what I expected it to be, Lord.” 

Shitty crowds in next to him, reaching for a spoon to take a taste of the pancake batter that’s been sitting in a bowl on the counter this whole time. “Better than expected?” 

Bitty lets out a small, strangled laugh. “Yeah, I think so.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> part three: 
> 
> in which the whole looming "NHL issue" finally gets talked about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's no point to this installment outside of pure self-indulgence. they fuck and then they fight and then they make up - what more does one want from a pimms fic? 
> 
> shout out to the discord, y'all, this is for you.

Kent has a shaky relationship with the off-season. He likes it for about a couple of weeks, on average. He likes the freedom to sleep in, to move from his bed to the lounge chairs next to his pool for a warm, mid-afternoon nap. Sometimes, he’ll go visit his mom in San Diego, so then he’s lounging in front of the ocean instead of next to a pool, just for a change of pace. 

His birthday is a blast, every year, because Swoops and Scraps throw an insane birthday blowout for him complete with barbeque and fireworks and teeny tiny red, white, and blue swim trunks that drive Jack crazy. But once the high of his annual Fourth of July birthday shenanigans starts to fade, all that free time starts to get real fucking boring and all he wants to do is play hockey again. 

Off-season training is nothing more than a necessary evil, a rigor that he pushes himself through so he can get to the good stuff again. There’s nothing like the Big Show, for Kent. The lights, the competition, the slick sound of his skates moving across freshly smoothed ice. 

Except, for the past few years, the off-season is also the only time when he actually gets to have Jack all to himself. They’ve meted out a delicate balance that mostly works for them over the past two years, scraping time together from bye-weeks and spring breaks and the free time that Jack’s able to carve out around prospect camps. 

Kent’s not gonna front, though, it fucking blows having to keep the two halves of his life almost entirely separate. He knows, intellectually, that things were really fucked up back in the Q on so many levels but man, getting to share hockey with Jack was just...special, in a way that he’s never gonna be able to put words to. 

Finally getting to share NHL ice with Jack? Kent gets shivers every time he tries to imagine what that’ll feel like. It’s gonna be out of this fucking world. 

It’s a little weird, though. They’re a month out from the start of Jack’s senior year and Jack still hasn’t said shit about meeting with the GM or his agent, or anything. He knows that there’s some kind of chatter happening, of course, because he’s found Jack sneaking out through the sliding door to pace the length of the back patio on more than one occasion, with his phone plastered to his ear. 

But Jack doesn’t talk about it. Or if he does, it’s not with Kent. 

Kent could reach out to the Aces GM himself but he’s trying not to push, for once. Jack plays fucking _gorgeous_ hockey and he just won a ship with Samwell. His team has finally gotten good enough that they’re positioned perfectly to snag another one, and even if they don’t, it’d be a surprise if they didn’t at least come close. Jack doesn’t need Kent to interfere with shit; any team in the league would be lucky to have him. 

Besides, it’s Jack and it’s hockey, and Kent knows all too well what a delicate fucking house of cards that is. 

Still, it’s weird in a way that feels purposeful enough to put a twist in Kent’s gut, like there’s something Jack’s not telling him. 

And as they march closer to Jack’s last year at Samwell with every passing day, it keeps getting harder and harder to keep his damn mouth shut.

.

There are benefits to a home gym.

Control over how clean his equipment is, for one. The short commute from his treadmill to his shower is another. 

But hands down, getting to openly ogle his husband while Jack is in the middle of his fifth rep of squats is square at the top of the list. 

Kent places the barbell down carefully into the two columns that protrude on either side of his weight bench, before settling backwards into the black pleather of the bench, balancing up on his elbows to watch Jack. It’s a funny sort of thing, watching Jack now. Mainly because Jack didn’t used to care this much about being ripped; not the way he does now, like every effort is meant to make it clear that there’s not an inch of his body that isn’t ready to play hockey. 

Not like when they first met, when Jack was all raw talent and soft edges with a near-obsessive work ethic. 

But that ass, man. That ass has always been out of this fucking world. 

Kent palms his dick through the thin mesh of his shorts, thanking every fucking deity that may or may not exist that he decided to go for the home gym, instead of attempting to drive 10 minutes down the road to the fancy country club for his daily strength training. 

Jack leans down, folding himself into his four-hundredth squat with a grunt, before swinging his arms backwards into a v-shape as he stands up straight. Kent, unable to help himself, lets out a low whistle. 

Jack cranes his neck over his shoulder to glare at Kent, but then his expression flattens into something else, something a little more blank and unpredictable. Kent knows that face; it’s the kind of expression that can turn on a dime into something else a little more interesting. 

Kent smirks to himself, cocking his head to the side. He never knows which Jack he’s gonna get, sometimes. There’s always the blushing, eager-to-please Jack, of course. That’s the Jack that’s always down for Kent to ride him into the fucking mattress, that’s happy to just to let the moment wash right over him, easy and slow and so damn good. 

Usually, though, there’s the playful Jack. The Jack that doesn’t give a shit if he rips Kent’s t-shirt while he tears it off, the Jack who laughs into the crook of Kent’s neck and leaves hickeys all the way down the long lines of Kent’s shoulders. That’s the Jack that he’s seen the most since they got back together, the Jack that laughs a little easier and likes to have fun with sex. 

The corner of Jack’s lips quirk upwards and he walks slowly towards Kent, moving with purpose, until they’re close enough that Kent can see the way his eyes have gone dark and focused. 

“Sit up,” Jack demands, as if he’s not standing there in dumb Samwell exercise shorts and bright yellow athletic shoes. Kent can’t help but grin.

And then there’s this Jack; commanding, knows exactly what he wants and how to ask for it Jack. Kent _loves_ this Jack. Quite fucking frankly, he doesn’t see this Jack enough; Jack has to ease into it, has to remember the way they move around each other after spending too long apart, before he’s confident enough for moments like this. 

Kent props himself up on his elbows, tossing Jack a slow, lazy smirk. He’s pretty sure that he watched a porno once that goes exactly like this; he’s also pretty sure that they’d make a better fucking porno than the one he watched. Food for thought; he’ll have to keep that idea in his back pocket for later. 

Jack comes to a stop in front of the weight bench, reaching out to tangle his fingers into the hair at the base of Kent’s neck and _tugging_. “I said, sit up.” 

Kent winces at the sharp pain resonating from the base of his scalp, even as a thrill runs up the back of his spine, the forward movement dragging him up into a seated position. He tilts his head back, glancing up at Jack through hooded eyes. “What do you want, babe?” 

Jack doesn’t say anything; he just eases his exercise shorts down, his cock springing out already mostly-hard and leaking slightly at the tip. Looks like Kent wasn't the only one thinking dirty thoughts in the middle of his work-out. He guides Kent’s head towards the tip of his cock, stopping only when Kent’s lips are brushing lightly against the head as it leaks with pre-cum. 

“I think you know,” Jack murmurs, and Kent doesn’t even try to mouth off, for all that he wants to, because there’s nothing quite like this, like the weight of Jack’s cock on his tongue as Jack slowly eases his way in, deeper and deeper. Jack gives the messy, sweaty hair at the base of Kent’s neck another sharp tug that crackles like a live wire all the way down to his dick. 

Jack pushes a little too sharp, a little too deep, and Kent gags slightly at the length of it. “Désolé,” Jack murmurs, as one hand reaches up to smooth back the top of Kent’s bangs. Kent rolls his eyes at Jack, because playing the brat is half the fun of this, and then takes Jack in even deeper, because he can, because he knows exactly what the curl of his tongue does to Jack’s higher brain functions. 

Kent sneaks one hand down to press the heel of his palm to his dick, but then Jack reaches down, knocking it away. 

“Don’t touch yourself,” Jack says, low and guttural. “Not yet.” 

Kent rolls his eyes again, mainly for show, because he knows and Jack knows that he’s getting exactly what he was looking for here. Still, he reaches out with one hand, pressing his fingertips into the crease of Jack’s hip bones, pressing hard enough to create small, finger-shaped bruises. “Shit, _Kenny_ ,” Jack breathes. “You’re doing so good, fuck.” 

Neither of them are going to last long, not like this, with everything turned up to high velocity. Jack’s hips stutter forward, just as he lets out a near incomprehensible stream of Quebecois curse words, and it’s all the warning that Kent gets before Jack’s spilling down the back of his throat. 

Kent pulls away, breathing heavily, wiping idly with the back of his hand. Jack leans forward, tipping his entire body into a forty-five degree angle over the weight bench, fixing Kent with that same focused look, but it doesn’t hit quite the same now with his pupils blown wide, as an easy, post-orgasmic grin crosses his face. 

Kent glances up at Jack through his eyelashes. “You gonna help me out here, babe, or what?” 

Jack huffs out a laugh, before reaching out, pressing the base of his palm to Kent’s lower abs, right above his hip bone. Kent inhales sharply, canting his hips upwards into the weight of Jack’s hand. “Does this count as helping?” 

Kent scoffs, easing his free hand beneath the hem of his shorts. “Can’t believe I married such a bastard.” 

“I think you’ll live,” Jack murmurs, because he’s a complete asshole, but Kent isn’t really paying attention anymore; he was already so fucking close, just from the weight of Jack’s dick on the back his tongue, just from the sight of Jack’s ass, bouncing up and down into a squat. It doesn’t take much for Kent from there, just a deep long slide and then a twist of the wrist before he’s coming all over his hand and his shorts, panting slightly as he stares up at Jack. 

Kent leans up, threading his fingers into the hair at the base of Jack’s neck to pull Jack down into a slow, sloppy kiss. “Damn, babe. I’m gonna like having you around all the time next year.” 

Jack huffs a laugh, but then his gaze darts sideways, towards the doors. “Yeah. Next year.” 

“About that,” Kent says, in what he hopes comes across as a casual tone. “You talk to the Aces GM yet?” 

Jack’s gaze shifts to settle somewhere behind Kent, just over his left shoulder. He pulls away from Kent, frowning softly. “It’s still early, Parse.” 

Kent runs his hands up and down his legs, suddenly shivering in the cool air conditioned gym as the sweat starts to dry into his skin. There’s a sinking in his stomach that he’s trying to tell himself doesn’t matter, because whatever he’s thinking, he’s got it all wrong. He must. 

“It’s really not, dude,” Kent says. “The more lead time you give them to get the wheels turning, the more they get how serious you are about it.” 

“Kenny -- ” Jack interrupts, suddenly looking pained, but Kent doesn’t think he cares to hear what comes next. 

“Why are you being so weird about this, Zimms?” Kent asks, well aware of how shrill his voice got at the end, and completely unable to stop it, anyways. “Do you...do you not wanna play in the NHL anymore? Is that what this is? Or have you, fucking whatever, convinced yourself that you can’t?” 

“That’s not it,” Jack says. His gaze snaps back to settle on Kent’s face; his expression is drawn and miserable and Kent thinks, just for a second, _good_. “I just...I don’t think I want to play for the Aces.” 

“Right,” Kent says hollowly. He realizes, belatedly, that his now-soft dick is still out, and he pulls up his shorts, feeling like ten kinds of an idiot. “Right. And uh, since when do you feel this way?” 

“I never said that I wanted to play for the Aces.” Jack takes a step back, crossing his arms over his chest. “You just...you just assumed.” 

Kent snorts. “Of course. _Of course_. And why the fuck would I assume that, huh?” Kent waves his hand at the space between them. “Absolutely crazy of me to assume that my _husband_ would want to, I don’t know, live in the same city as me.” 

“Parse, c’mon…” Jack starts, in that stern Canadian Captain voice of his that he only ever pulls out when he wants to win an argument by acting like he’s the only logical one here which, fuck that. Fuck that, Jack Zimmermann. 

“Is this just bullshit to you?” Kent snaps, before Jack can even try to finish what was no doubt going to be an annoyingly patronizing sentence. “You and me, is this just like...an easy way to get your dick wet until something better comes along? Until you meet the right woman and then you can be the perfect hockey player you’ve always wanted to be?” 

It’s a shitty thing to say. He knows it’s a shitty thing to say as soon as he’s said it but he’s gone white-hot with anger and shame, and it’s clouding everything else in sight. 

“Fuck you, Parse,” Jack says, taking another step back. There’s a flush high in his cheeks that has nothing to do with the sex they just had; his jaw is clenched tight the way it is when he’s _pissed_.

“Yeah,” Kent says, suddenly deflating, all of the fight draining out of him at once. “Fuck me, is right.” 

Kent stands up from the weight bench and walks away, slamming the door to the gym behind him. 

And Jack doesn’t follow.

.

Kent lets the steady water pressure from his shower head beat down on the back of his neck, moving only to run his hands through his hair periodically, until his fingers start to prune.

Kent sniffs wetly, wiping the back of his hand across his eyes. He’s always been such a messy fucking crier, it’s embarrassing. The inside of his chest feels scooped out, replaced with nothing but a tired, familiar ache. There was a point, a couple of months after Kent’s first visit to Samwell, when he made a promise to himself that he wasn’t gonna let Jack make him feel this way anymore. 

It was a total bullshit promise and he knew it the second that he made it because he’s an idiot with a softer heart than he’d like to admit. 

It’s the principle of it, though. He thought they were past all this. Past the point where he’d find himself crying inside of his stupid three thousand dollar shower stall, feeling small and unwanted and mostly, like a complete fool.

Kent shuts the water off with a sigh, before shaking his head back and forth like a dog. 

“Can’t hide in here forever, Parson,” he mutters to himself, before swinging the glass door open and reaching for a towel. 

There’s a rustling sound coming from the bedroom, like someone pushing aside the covers or moving a pillow around. Jack is making the bed, probably, because he’s the only one who sees any point in doing it. 

Kent takes in a deep breath, and then lets it out. He dresses quickly, shucking on a pair of navy linen shorts and a white t-shirt with a deep v in the collar because if Jack’s gonna dump him, he’s at least gonna look hot for it. 

Kent’s hand trembles slightly as he places his wet towel back on the hook. Jack’s not going to dump him; he _knows_ better than that, after everything they’ve been through. 

But for the first time in a while, he really has no idea what’s going on inside Jack’s head. 

When he opens the door to the bedroom, Jack’s sitting at the edge of the newly-made bed, facing the bathroom door, staring at his hands. 

“Hey,” Kent says softly, as Jack lifts his gaze up to meet Kent’s. 

“Hey,” Jack says, with a small, wry twist to his lips. “I, uh. I probably could’ve timed that confession a little better.” 

Kent lets out a little huff as he goes to perch next to Jack on the bed. “I probably could’ve reacted like less of a dick, too, so you know. Mistakes all around.” Kent knocks his right foot gently into Jack’s left, like a brief, casual little hello, a small touch to breach the distance. “I’m sorry for what I said. It was shitty and I didn’t mean it.”

Jack glances at him sideways. “I know you didn’t. I, eugh. I do want to be here with you, I need you to know that.” 

Jack leans over, pressing his hand to Kent’s thigh, palm facing up. Another bridge, another invitation. Kent places his own hand over Jack’s, and Jack laces their fingers together. 

Kent clears his throat, staring at Jack’s face in profile, as he tries to figure out where this is gonna go next. “But….?” 

“But I know if I don’t...if I don’t do this on my own, I’m always going to wonder if...if I ever really had what it takes to make it after all,” Jack admits, all at once, like ripping off a band-aid. “I can’t...if I spend the rest of my life thinking I only made it in the NHL because of you, I don’t….” Jack exhales sharply, shaking his head. “Shit. I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could just be happy that any team wants me in the NHL at all, but I can’t.” He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “I let myself get so twisted up with jealousy, before, that I couldn’t even see you through the haze of it. I don’t want that to happen again.” 

Kent traces patterns into Jack’s skin with the calloused whorls of his thumb, slow and even, while he mulls over what to say in response. “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?” 

It’s worth asking; he’s learned that the hard way, that there are problems in Jack’s mind that are set in stone and other, smaller problems in Jack’s mind that are more like temporary hang-ups. Sometimes, with those, all he needs is a slight nudge to help him get over it. This doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that gets solved with a slight nudge, though. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Jack admits quietly, and Kent just nods because yeah, he was expecting that. 

“The thing is, Zimms,” Kent starts, pausing the steady sweeping of his thumb back and forth across the back of Jack’s hand. “I gotta know, is this always how it’s gonna be? We’re together, but only on your terms?” 

“Kenny, _no_ ,” Jack says, his voice cracking at the end. “I don’t. I don’t want that either. I, just. Okay. Name a term.” 

Kent pulls his knee up onto the bed, swinging around to face Jack. “What?” 

“Name a term,” Jack says again, with more confidence the second time around. “Something you need from me.” 

“I….” Kent stutters slightly, his thoughts racing a mile a minute around his brain until they finally settle one thing that actually makes sense. “Okay, uh. Try to sign with a team in the Western Conference. Pacific would be better, we’ll see each other more that way. Or, uh….Central would be okay, I guess, but they’d have to give you a seriously banging contract to make playing in Central remotely worth it.” 

Jack pauses, considering. “I can do that. My agent says she’s received some interest from the Aeros and the Yotes. The Sharks, too, but she says that one’s more of a long shot.” 

“Cool,” Kent breathes out. “Cool. None of them have ever won a Cup, so….there’s a lot of potential there. Were you...was there anyone in the Eastern Conference that…?” 

“The Falconers have been pursuing me pretty heavily,” Jack admits with a small wince. “I’ve had talks with their assistant GM. I like her and I like the way she works, but...I was already going to say no. Providence feels...way too far, after shuttling back and forth between Boston and Vegas.” 

Kent’s stupid, soft heart flutters in his chest. “Okay. Cool.” 

“What, is that your word of the day?” Jack chirps, but there’s a little hesitation to it, like he’s not sure they’re ready for chirping just yet. This is the problem with loving Jack, Kent finds. He can be a completely thoughtless ass sometimes but even then, he still saves up so much gentleness that exists just for Kent, and seeing the truth of that written all over Jack’s face, open and guileless, never fails to make Kent’s stomach flip inside out. 

Kent kicks him lightly in the calf. “Shut up, man, I’m getting over an emotional crisis over here.” 

Jack raises their interlaced fingers to press a soft kiss to the back of Kent’s hand. “Kenny...this isn’t a permanent no to you and me playing together. Just, not yet. But I..I miss it too, you know.” 

“Yeah?” Kent asks, voice hushed, like the whole world has narrowed down to the space between them. 

Jack’s eyebrows furrows together; a small, sad smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Yeah, god. Of course I do.” 

Suddenly, the couple of inches separating them feels too vast, so Kent scooches forward, swinging one leg over Jack’s lap until he’s settled into it, with Jack’s hands coming up to his waist to steady him. 

“You know, you used to be a lot smaller when we’d do this, huh?” Jack murmurs, before nipping his teeth gently along Kent’s jawline. 

Kent pushes at Jack’s chest until he falls backwards against the bed, and Kent topples over with him. “Wow, rude. Are you trying to say you miss my twink self?” 

Jack slides a warm hand underneath Kent’s t-shirt, splaying his fingers across Kent’s abs, eliciting a shiver. “I’m not saying that, no.” 

Kent knocks Jack’s hand away, pinning Jack to the bed with both hands braced against his shoulders, and God, does he love the way Jack lets his head tip all the way back, his gaze gone dark and hooded again. “Are you trying to make up for ruining the afterglow earlier?” 

A flush crawls up Jack’s neck almost instantly. “Eh, maybe? Is it working?” 

Kent leans forward until their noses brush together, his cowlick falling down and tickling Jack’s forehead. He takes a deep breath in, and then out, feels the same warmth of Jack’s breath against his cheek. It’s not _not_ working, is the thing, because Kent’s easy like that. It’s fine; at least he knows this about himself. “You know,” Kent murmurs, “on second thought, playing against you is gonna make our sex bets pretty fucking hot.” 

Jack’s lips curl upwards into a smile. “So it _is_ working.” 

“Shut up and kiss me, Zimms,” Kent huffs, so Jack closes the scant distance between them and does exactly that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> truly I don't know how the hell this story has become the thing my brain has been able to do at the end of the day to decompress but it's helping me and I hope that in some small way, it's helping you too. stay safe out there and don't forget, ACAB.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kent Parson is the saddest, prettiest gay mouse. Until he isn't.
> 
> Meanwhile, Jeff is just trying to figure his shit out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said the last one was self-indulgent but this is literally like, Peak Self-Indulgence. Idk, man. I even made up a hockey team while I was at it. inspired by that one art from Huddle 3, you know the one.
> 
> Yes, this is a Halloween fic. Yes, it is June. Look, time has no meaning anymore and besides, it's Pride month. Who loves Halloween more than us queers? Exactly. Literally no one.

Christmas is bullshit. 

Thanksgiving is bullshit too, come to think of it, and as for Easter, well -- who the fuck cares about Zombie Jesus, anyways? 

Not Jeff, that’s for damn sure. Largely because he’s Jewish and it’s a real pain in the ass, trying to celebrate his own holidays while on a very white, very Christian schedule. No one’s giving Jeff a day or two off for Yom Kippur in the NHL, that’s for damn sure. 

Halloween, though. Halloween is so deeply his shit that it’s not even funny. Give him ghosts, give him witches, give him marathons of the Halloweentown movies while he’s high as shit on edibles. Jeff will happily take it all and he’ll keep asking for more. He has a new costume, every year, and even if he can’t celebrate on the day itself, he’ll still find a way to fuck with his Aces sweater just enough that it counts as something different, even if he’s the only one to see the weird Jack O’Lantern tape that he stuck to the inside of his collar. 

It was an adjustment, moving to Vegas and having to find a different way to mark the passing of the seasons. He can’t rely on the slow turn from green to a deep, rusted orange in the trees to let him know what’s coming. 

Two things mark Halloween in Vegas, for Jeff. One is the noticeable uptick in advertisements for magic shows; the second is that every year, Parser goes harder for Halloween than literally anyone else that Jeff has ever known, himself included. We’re talking decorating his house with pumpkins and cob-webs, doing his best Sarah Sanderson impression in the locker room, and making all of the rookies watch Practical Magic with him just because he can. The whole nine fucking yards, that’s Parser and Halloween. It’s the thing that they bonded over pretty much instantly after Jeff got traded to the Aces back in 2010 and Jeff hasn’t looked back once. 

Which is why it’s so fucking annoying when Jeff looks across the crowded, pumpkin-covered living room of his house and finds Parser sitting slumped at the kitchen counter, face cupping the side of his face, as he stares morosely into the distance. 

He’d been all smiles when he first showed up at Jeff’s door earlier, clad in nothing but black booty shorts, a black muscle tee, and his dumb mouse ears, complete with matching makeup. Scraps had scrunched his whole face up, which was the only part of him that they could really see through his mummy costume, as he looked down at Parser. “Cap, what are you?” 

Parser had just smirked, cocking a hip and pointing at his ears with his index finger. “I’m a mouse. _Duh_.” 

Scraps did not get the joke and Jeff, who at this point had done his fair share of pre-gaming with a tray of jello shots, just laughed his ass off at the whole spectacle of it. Scraps, who really had no right to look that good covered head-to-toe in what could only be about five thousand sets of Everlast hand wraps, just shrugged helplessly. His biceps bulged obscenely through the white, cloth wrappings, which what the fuck, how does Scraps even _do_ that, before he gave them both that little, small sheepish smile that he always makes when there’s a joke that he doesn’t get. It’s annoying, how charming that smile is, but Jeff doesn’t get a lot of time to sulk over it because then Scraps is pulling Parser into the house by the arm and dragging them both towards a table of shots and after that, everything starts to go a little bit sideways. 

Two hours ago, Parser was the life of the fucking party. Now, he’s the exact opposite of that. What the fuck. 

“What the fuck, man,” Jeff says, as he sidles up next to Parser and hops up on one of the stools in his open plan kitchen. “Why do you look _sad_ , did someone give you bourbon?” 

Parser looks to be nursing a vodka soda with a quarter lime, as-per-fucking-usual, but you never know. The last time Jeff saw Parser drinking bourbon, it was three years ago and the dumb fucker almost went home with some dude in a ska band with a neck tattoo which wow, gross. The line work was real fucking shaky but Jeff’s still pretty sure that it was a dragon tattoo, like the world’s biggest fucking cliche. Parser on bourbon is not to be fucked with. That dude’s a wild card. 

Parser just wrinkles his nose, painted-on whiskers and all. “Over my dead fucking body, no.” 

Jeff pushes his Doc Brown goggles up to the top of his head, perching them precariously on top of his wild, grey-haired wig. “Dude, then what gives?” 

Parser sullenly brings his vodka-soda up his lips to knock back half the glass in one go, before placing it carelessly back onto the marble countertop with a small thud. “Sometimes, I fucking hate you people.” 

“My bro, you are talking to a brown Jewish hockey player. Be a little more specific before I knock your dumb brains out,” Jeff scoffs, reaching over to grab a handle of vodka to top up both Parser’s glass and his. He doesn’t actually think that Parser is trying to say anything secretly racist but it is, he has to admit, a pretty easy way to get Parser to remember that he’s not the only dude on the team who doesn’t fit in. 

Parser blanches, before knocking back a quick shot of straight vodka. He brandishes his empty glass towards the rest of the room, which is filled with Aces players, players from the local minor baseball team, and everyone’s assorted dates. 

Basically, it’s a lot of dudes with big muscles making out with a lot of pretty girls who probably have a Tumblr account that regularly follows and contributes to the ask-a-puck-bunny-blog, or whatever. As per-fucking-usual. 

There are some exceptions, of course. The Aces Ice Girls always get invited to these kinds of parties, even though they’re not supposed to come, and then they usually show up with boyfriends on their arm who are knee-deep into like, the mob or the Las Vegas real estate scene, both of which are basically the same thing. 

Except for Jelena, who’s too picky for that kind of nonsense, and Mel, who’s way too gay for it. 

Except Mel couldn’t make it tonight. And Jelena, last Jeff had checked, was making time with an Olympic archer who somehow managed to snag an invite from Scraps, go figure. 

Jeff narrows his gaze, letting his eyes sweep their way across the crowded room, before he turns to Parser, frowning softly. “Is this, like...a Zimmermann thing?” 

Parser just rolls his eyes. “If by that, you mean sometimes it sucks to watch you people mack on each other when I can’t even hold his hand in public, then yeah, this is a Zimmermann thing.” 

Jeff drops his highball glass to the countertop with a small thud and wishes, not for the first time, that he had thought to make his first drink in a red solo cup. It sets a bad example to the rest of them, is all. If they see the host drinking out of a proper glass, then everyone will spend the rest of the night trying to snag china from Jeff’s carefully organized cabinets. He’s gonna find vomit in his gravy boat tomorrow morning and he only has himself to blame. 

The Zimmermann thing is….weird, he guesses. There was something kind of different about Parser, from the very second that Jeff met him. Parser did a good show of hiding it, of course, of turning himself into the platonic ideal of a cool, calm captain, unbothered by strife or drama, or even the smallest of dumb-fuck arguments. 

But it was still weird, how a hotshot hockey bro could spend half an hour wheeling some girl and then immediately pass her off to his closest teammate without even a second thought. Jeff heard a lot of weird shit about Vegas before he got traded there, about strip clubs and hazing rituals and when he finally got here, when he finally got to really get the lay of the land, it was a surprise, to find out that while none of that was bullshit, it was also mostly outdated information. It made a little more sense, once he found out that Parser was gay, but even then, there was still a piece of the puzzle missing, some key part of the mystery that was still just a little out of focus. 

And then the lockout happened. 

Then, Parser went to Berlin and Jeff went to Prague, and when they met up again in January, something was different about Parser. He smiled a little easier, skated with a little more joie de vivre than he used to, which was already a metric fuck-tonne, to be honest, and he didn’t even pretend to wheel girls at clubs anymore. 

It was another month or so before Parser invited him over for drinks and a hell of a fucking world-tilting confession; that he was secretly _married_ to Bad Bob’s druggie son, like his life is some messed up sequel to Sweet Home Alabama, because who the fuck gets married when they’re eighteen, what the fuck. 

Jeff’s met Zimmermann a couple of times, since then. The dude comes out to Vegas for most of his school vacations or whatever, and he’s been at Parser’s birthday party for the past two summers. 

And like, he’s fine. He’s a little weird and he doesn’t talk that much, but he does like golf and hockey and Kent Parson, so it’s not like Jeff has nothing in common with the man. Sure, Jeff doesn’t like Kent Parson the way Jack Zimmermann likes Kent Parson, if the dude’s reaction to Parser in tiny American flag-themed short-shorts is anything to go by, but still. 

Parser’s his best friend and he wants the dude to be happy. So sure, Jeff does have some less than savory thoughts about the years before they got back together because what kind of dead-beat asshole makes a commitment like marriage and then ghosts, but whatever. Parser swears that Zimmermann apologized, that they’ve talked it out, and that he gets why Zimmermann did it, even if it royally sucked. And sure, fine, Zimmermann's reasons all had something to do with rehab and recovery and shit, which are all things that Jeff can admit he doesn't know a damn thing about. 

That's not even getting into the fact that Jeff’s longest relationship to date was about four months, so he’s not exactly any kind of an expert in that subject either. He can’t even figure out if he’s 100% sure if maybe he might want to kiss a dude some time. Maybe that dude might be Scraps, or maybe they all just spend too much fucking time together and Jeff hasn’t gotten laid in half a year. Who knows? Jeff sure as fuck doesn’t. He keeps meaning to bring it up to Parser but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s being dumb about it and that Parser might make fun of him which like, he would, but still, in a nice way. Probably. 

The only thing Jeff’s 100% sure about is that those jello shots he pregamed with were _potent_ , holy shit. 

But anyways, the other thing about Zimmermann is, he’s so rarely around that it’s easy to forget that Parser is married. Easy to forget that there’s anything about being stuck in a crowded room full of drunk heteros macking on each other that would bother him at all. 

It doesn’t help that the longer Jeff stands here, the more he can feel the warmth crawling up the back of his neck, and he blinks slightly at the too-bright light over the kitchen counter. Does booze catch up with you faster when you’re not moving? That has to be what this is. Jeff has to remember to Google that shit when he’s sober again. 

Anyways, the point is, all things con-fucking-sidered, he should get like, a one-time free pass for not knowing what the hell to say to wipe that tragic look off Parser’s face. 

Jeff reaches for the bottle of vodka, tipping it over to fill up Parser’s glass. Facts. He can stick with facts. “We’ll be in Boston in December, my dude.” 

“Oh wow, two whole months from now,” Parse snipes sarcastically, leveling Jeff with a deeply unimpressed glare. “Troy, you dumb fuck, was that....supposed to be helpful?” 

Jeff frowns softly, sloshing some more vodka into his highball glass and then swiftly knocking it back. It’s possible that he’s had way too much to drink for this conversation. He squints slightly at the bottom of his glass, trying to make out the shape of Parser through the distorted glass, before refilling it again. “What month is it again?” 

Parser leans over, plucking the glass of Jeff’s hands and downing its contents in one go. “Jefferson Broseph Troy, it is _October_ , that’s why we’re having the Halloween party. You know, at your house.” 

“My name is _not_ Jefferson,” Jeff says hotly, like that’s the important part of this conversation. “And I know this is my house. The bathrooms all have my hand soap.” 

Parser just raises an eyebrow, which shouldn’t be at all effective when he’s wearing mouse ears, but still is, somehow, because that’s just how ice cold Parser rolls. The makeup on his face hasn’t even started to smudge at all, even though there’s like fifty people crammed into this room and they’re all definitely sweating a little. 

Which, what the hell. How does he do that? How does Parser _always_ manage to do that? 

Every time Parser shows the tiniest inch of being like, a person who gets sad and shit, he just as quickly finds a way to slip back into chill mode before you’ve even realized he’s done it, and then it’s too fucking late to try and pull it back. Not without like, some serious patience and strategic planning and honestly, right this second, Jeff’s just a little surprised that he still knows what the word strategic even _means_. 

That settles it. Talking is not the solution here. 

Jeff snaps his Doc Brown glasses back down over his face, before reaching out to clap a hand down onto Parser’s shoulder. “C’mon, Parser. This sadness is a...a shitty fucking party foul, is what it is.” 

Parser quirks a small, thin smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes but that’s okay, the night’s still young. “You’re right, Jefferson. Let’s go get blasted and play beer pong.”

.

Jeff wakes up to the sound of a distant knocking, possibly coming from his front door, followed by a couple of jingles from the doorbell. There’s a dull pounding in the back of his head and his mouth tastes dry; he blinks his crusty eyes open, taking stock of the situation. He’s sprawled out along the big, comfy sectional closest to the kitchen, there’s a bottle of water next to his head, and minus the white coat, he’s still mostly dressed in his Doc Brown costume.

Jeff cranes his neck to the side. The living room is covered in empty bottles and various detritus from people’s costumes as the night wore on and everyone got drunker and sweatier and more likely to start peeling off their outfits. Parser is passed out on the sectional opposite Jeff’s, complete with his mouse ears and a matching bottle of water of his own. An attempt has been made to start to clean up at least a little, if the carefully stacked piles of paper plates on the coffee table are anything to go by. 

The whole tableau has Scraps written all over it because as much as he likes to party, he has the constitution of a small horse and never manages to get as wasted as the rest of them. He’s probably asleep in the guest room, like he always is after parties, and Jeff refuses to examine the small flutter in his stomach that comes with this thought because at this point, that flutter might just as easily lead to vomit. 

Someone is still ringing the fucking doorbell. 

“Ugh,” Jeff mutters to himself. He heaves himself up, slowly stumbling his way to the front door, grabbing the water bottle as he goes. He pauses at the door, taking a second to gulp down some lukewarm yet lifesaving water, before swinging it straight open. 

On the other side, looking well-rested and not at all hungover, is Jack Zimmermann. He's wearing most of a three piece suit, save the blazer, like he's just come from a meeting; the sleeves of his light blue Oxford are rolled up to his elbows. He looks completely, annoyingly put-together for 11 AM after Halloween weekend. And alright, so he is pretty hot, Jeff’ll give Parser that. Not really Jeff’s type, if Jeff has any idea what his type is, but still. He can appreciate a good ass and a nice pair of eyes when he sees them. 

Jeff blinks once, and then twice. “What the fuck, man. Did you get lost?” 

Zimmermann furrows his eyebrows together, pulling a phone out of his back pocket. “I got a text from Kent around….3 AM, saying that he was gonna spend the night here?”

Come to think of it, there is a blurry memory of him and Parser sitting by the pool, drinking bourbon, while Parser kept trying and failing to FaceTime Zimmermann before eventually giving up and getting Siri to text him instead. There’d been a lot of moping, at that point in the night. Damnit, Parser. Always with the bourbon. 

“And that text was….legible?” Jeff asks, as he feels his eyebrows shoot straight up, incredulous. 

Zimmermann just smirks. “Eh, mostly. I do have _some_ experience in translating Drunk Kent to English.” 

Jeff closes his eyes, still feeling a little fuzzy. “And so you...flew all the way from Boston?” 

“I was a little closer than that,” Zimmermann says cryptically, before jerking his head in the direction of the entryway. “Can I come in?” 

Jeff tiredly waves Zimmermann in because he just does not have the energy to deal with Zimmermann’s whole, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed whatever right now, before turning around and heading towards the living room. “Parser! Wake the fuck up! Your man is here!” 

“Hm - wha?” Parser’s voice drifts towards them, muzzy with sleep and sounding barely conscious. “Zimms?” 

Zimmermann weaves his way through and around the post-party rubble until he can sink to a crouch next to the sectional that Parser’s passed out on. Jeff lingers awkwardly in the large, open-plan entrance to the living room, wondering if he should like, give them space or whatever. Finally, he settles on standing behind the kitchen counter, as he tries to make himself look busy while he searches for a fresh bag of coffee. 

“You turned into a mouse, mon minou,” Zimmermann says quietly, leaning over to brush Parser’s hair out of his face. “How’d that happen?” 

Jeff doesn’t see what Parser does next because he is absolutely _not watching_ but he does hear him say, in typical chirpy fashion, “Zimms, if I gotta explain Halloween to you at the grand old age of twenty-four, we’ve got some problems.” 

And then a second later, Parser is pushing himself up into a seat, looking a hell of a lot more awake than he has any right to be. Okay, fine. So Jeff is totally watching. It’s not his fault that Parser and his husband are like some sort of crazy clandestine soap opera come to life. 

“Wait, shit. Your meeting yesterday. How’d it go?” Parser asks, pushing his dumb mouse ears back from where they’d slid forward onto his forehead. 

“You’re looking at the latest signing for the Salt Lake City Grizzlies,” Zimmermann says, and it’s impossible not to hear the pride in his voice, even for Jeff, who barely knows the guy. 

“Wait, you’re signing with the new expansion team?” Jeff blurts out, before he can stop himself. “Parser told me it was probably gonna be Houston.” 

“Salt Lake poached the Falconers Assistant GM, Georgia Martin. Gave her the GM position,” Zimmermann explains, turning his head sideways to face Jeff. “She wanted me for the Falconers originally and when she got the new job, she reached out again. My agent flew in late last night to meet me, we went over the fine print, and then I signed a two-year entry contract first thing this morning.” 

Jeff whistles lowly. “Shit, man. Expansion drafts are fucking nuts, you could end up with a seriously stacked team.” 

“We’ll see,” Zimmermann says with a small, inscrutable smile, before he turns back to face Parser. Gross, they’re probably gonna start making out now. 

“Salt Lake is a hell of a lot closer than Boston,” Parser murmurs, reaching out with one hand to grab hold of Zimmermann’s arm and pull him closer. 

“Closer than Houston, even,” Zimmermann agrees. “Six hours by car. Five, if you’re the one driving.” 

“Excuse you, I’m an _excellent_ driver,” Parser says archly, but then Zimmermann is kissing him and Parser is all but launching himself into Zimmermann’s lap even though like, Zimmermann isn’t even fucking sitting down and they’re probably gonna topple backwards into the coffee table any second now. 

Jeff has never wished harder for a water pistol before in his life. Ugh, love is disgusting. 

“Uh, hello?” Jeff cups his hands together as if to make a megaphone and then shouts through his cupped hands. “This is my house? Do not bone in my living room. You literally have a whole house that you own and it’s like, barely a fifteen minute drive from here.” 

Parser just flips Jeff off over Zimmermann’s shoulder which wow, rude. 

After a minute or so, Parser finally de-suctions his mouth from Zimmermann’s face to turn and give Jeff a wide, bright smile that’s completely ruined by the fact that his dumb mouse makeup is now smudged all over his face and his ears are half-knocked off. “Thanks for the hospitality, Jefferson. We’ll be leaving now.” 

“My name is _not_ Jefferson,” Jeff protests, even though he knows it’s fucking useless to even try now that Parser knows how much it annoys him. He huffs into the cup of coffee that he’s just poured for himself, leveling Parser with a glare over the lip of his mug. 

Parser and Zimmermann somehow clamber to their feet without losing hold of each other, their hands clasped together tightly as Parser sways gently into Zimmermann’s side. This could be from either the hangover or the disgusting in-love-ness, it’s hard to tell. Maybe both, honestly. Jeff can’t believe he’s bearing witness to all this with his own eyeballs, in his own house, before he’s even gotten the chance to make his standard hangover breakfast. 

Zimmermann slings an arm around Parser’s shoulders, as they round the corner of Jeff’s kitchen island. 

“Hey Jefferson!” There’s a sly smile curling around the edges of Parser’s lips, which in Jeff’s experience, is never, ever a good sign. “Don’t worry, we’re gonna talk about that thing soon.” 

Jeff freezes. He almost says _what thing_ but then a puzzle piece slots into place, and the rest of their drunken poolside heart-to-heart comes back to him in a flash. There was definitely a point towards the end there when Jeff dedicated a five minute rambling speech to the glory of Scraps and his biceps. “Oh shit,” Jeff mutters softly into his coffee. “ _Oh shit_.” 

“Hey,” Parser says, a little gentler this time. “It’s all good, dude. If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to. But you did kinda seem like maybe you might want to. Door’s always open, is all I’m saying.” Parser looks up at Zimmermann, and then shoots Jeff a wolfish grin. “Well, not _always_. Come knocking at my door in the next 24 hours and you’re on your own, pal.” 

“Ugh,” Jeff says, barely resisting the urge to flick his cup of coffee in Parser’s direction. It’s basically room temperature by now, so he’d be fine. “Please leave before I have to make a citizen’s arrest.” 

The sound of Zimmermann’s rumbling laugh follows them out the door, until all of a sudden Jeff is alone in his house, fucking finally. 

Except for Scraps, who is definitely still asleep in the guest room, probably half-naked and partially covered in leftover mummy wrappings. 

Jeff collapses forward onto the kitchen island, narrowly missing his coffee mug to bury his face into his folded arms, letting out a low groan. “Maybe I should’ve just let them fuck on my couch.”


End file.
